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Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
ROBERT MORRIS
ROBERT MORRIS
el dibujo como pensamiento
Patrocina:
EXPOSICIN
Comisaria
Barbara Rose
Coordinacin
M Jess Folch
Presidente de Honor
Alberto Fabra Part
Molt Honorable President de la Generalitat
Presidenta
Lola Johnson
Consellera de Turismo, Cultura y Deporte de la
Generalitat
Vicepresidenta
Consuelo Cscar Casabn
Directora Gerente del IVAM
Patrocina:
Direccin
Consuelo Cscar Casabn
rea Tcnico-Artstica
Raquel Gutirrez
Comunicacin y Desarrollo
Encarna Jimnez
Gestin Interna
Joan Bria
Econmico-Administrativo
Juan Carlos Lled
Accin Exterior
Raquel Gutirrez
Secretaria
Alida Mas
Montaje Exterior
Jorge Garca
Vocales
Ricardo Bellveser
Francisco Calvo Serraller
Felipe Garn Llombart
ngel Kalenberg
Toms Llorens Serra
Luis Lobn Martn
Jos M Lozano Velasco
Rafael Ripoll Navarro
Marta Alonso Rodrguez
Registro
Cristina Mulinas
Directores honorarios
Toms Llorens Serra
Carmen Alborch Bataller
J. F. Yvars
Juan Manuel Bonet
Kosme de Baraano
Restauracin
Maite Martnez
Conservacin
Marta Arroyo
Irene Bonilla
Maita Caams
J. Ramon Escriv
M Jess Folch
Teresa Millet
Josep Vicent Monz
Josep Salvador
Departamento de Publicaciones
Manuel Granell
Biblioteca
Elosa Garca
BANCAJA
Presidenta de Honor de la Fundacin Bancaja
S.A.R. la Infanta Doa Cristina, Duquesa de
Palma de Mallorca
Presidente de Bancaja
Molt Hble. Sr. Jos Luis Olivas Martnez
Fotografa
Juan Garca Rosell
Montaje
Yolanda Montas
CATLOGO
Produccin
IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Valencia 2011
Diseo
Manuel Granell
Coordinacin
Vicky Menor
Traduccin
rea de Poltica Lingstica de la Conselleria dEducaci, Toms Belaire
Karel Clapshaw, Virginia Collera, Olivier Saint-Germes
IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern, Valencia 2011
de los textos sus autores, Valencia 2011
Robert Morris, VEGAP, Valencia, 2011
Realizacin
www.laimprentacg.com
ISBN: 978-84-482-5650-0
DL: V-2982-2011
Est rigurosamente prohibido, bajo las sanciones establecidas por la ley, reproducir, registrar o transmitir esta publicacin, ntegra o parcialmente, por cualquier sistema de recuperacin y por cualquier
medio, sea mecnico, electrnico, magntico, electroptico, por fotocopia o cualquier otro tipo de
soporte, sin la autorizacin expresa del IVAM Institut Valenci dArt Modern y de los titulares del
copyright.
REFLEXIONES DIBUJADAS
PRESENTACIN
11
13
Barbara Rose
LNEAS DE VISIN
79
Jeffrey Weiss
CATLOGO
DIBUJOS: UNA APRECIACIN
99
253
Thomas Krens
259
CRONOLOGA
277
TRADUCCIONES
293
Cua de acero, tamao real, impulsada contra la pared, 1969. Grato sobre papel, 45,7 x 61 cm
REFLEXIONES DIBUJADAS
Consuelo Cscar Casabn
Directora del IVAM
Vistas de la instalacin Continuous Project Altered Daily (1969) en la Leo Castelli Warehouse, Nueva York, marzo 1-22, 1969
Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
Less Than (Menos que). Dibujo para un bronce instalado permanentemente en Reggio Emilio, Italia, 2003. Grato sobre papel, 44,1 x 57,5 cm
10
PRESENTACIN
Jos Luis Olivas Martnez
Presidente de Bancaja
11
1. Labyrinthe II. Entrevista de Anne Bertrand a Robert Morris. Publicada en Robert Morris. From Mnemosyne to Clio: The Mirror to Labyrinth (1998-1999-2000). Muse dArt Contemporain, Lyon,
2000. Skira, pg. 164.
13
2. Bernice Rose: Drawing Now, catlogo de exposicin. Museum of Modern Art, Nueva York 1976.
3. Correo electrnico al autor, 6 de junio de 2011.
I ANTECEDENTES
Yo soy mis dibujos, para bien o para mal. Quienes somos, estoy seguro, se
denir de forma muy distinta en el futuro.
Robert Morris, 6 de junio de 20113
14
4. Entrevista de Paul Cumming a Robert Morris, 10 de marzo de 1968. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
5. Ibd.
15
6. Ibd.
7. Ibd.
16
Paul Czanne Mont Sainte-Victoire, ca. 1902-1906. leo sobre lienzo, 63,8 x 81,5 cm
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Adquisicin: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 38-6.
Fotografa: Jamison Miller
17
Basado de una seccin del Mont Sainte-Victoire vu des Lauves, 1902-06, de Paul Cezanne, 1998
Encustica sobre panel de madera, 236,2 x 147,6 cm
Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
8. Robert Morris: Czannes Mountains. Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, no. 3 (Primavera), 1998.
18
19
10. Branden Joseph: Robert Morris and John Cage: Reconstructing a Dialogue. October, vol. 81 (Verano), 1997, pp. 5969.
11. Robert Morris: Letters to John Cage. October, vol. 81 (Verano), 1997, pp. 7079.
12. La esposa de Young, Marian Zazeela, creaba proyecciones para los conciertos que organizaban en su loft, al que bautizaron Dream House, un centro para los artistas de vanguardia que
tomaban partido en el grupo Fluxus.
20
21
22
23
24
18. En septiembre de 1962, tras el infructuoso intento de Estados Unidos de derrocar el rgimen cubano en la Baha de Cochinos, llegan a Cuba los primeros misiles procedentes de la Unin
Sovitica, que se haba aliado con el gobierno de la isla para construir en secreto bases para misiles balsticos nucleares de alcance intermedio con potencial para volar por los aires buena parte de
Estados Unidos.
25
26
Robert Morris y Carolee Schneeman durante la performance Site, New York 1964
Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
19. La segunda edicin de las Philosophical Investigations de Wittgenstein se public en ingls en 1958. The Blue and Brown Books: Preliminary Studies for the Philosophical Investigations se edit
en ingls en Estados Unidos en 1960 y el Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, en 1961. Morris ley los tres libros y siempre los mantuvo como referencias.
27
20. Maurice Berger: Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s. Harper & Row, Nueva York 1989.
historia del arte y con las prcticas del arte asitico que
haba estudiado con el pintor de la Escuela de Nueva
York School Ad Reinhardt, que enseaba historia
del arte y no artes visuales en el Hunter Collage. La
inuencia que ejerci Reinhardt sobre la generacin
de jvenes artistas que consolidaron sus carreras en los
sesenta es mucho mayor de lo que hoy se le reconoce.
En cualquier reconsideracin del arte minimalista y
conceptual, la sombra de Ad Reinhardt sera mucho
ms alargada, la bibliografa actual no le hace justicia.
En ocasiones Morris estaba en desacuerdo con sus
profesores del Hunter Collage, pero encontr razones
para admirar a Reinhardt y los dos se hicieron amigos.
28
29
30
31
21. Ibd.
32
22. Robert Morris: Blank Form, 1960, reimpreso en Barbara Haskell: Blam!: The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism, and Performance 19581964. Whitney Museum of American Art, W.W. Norton,
Nueva York 1984, p. 101.
23. Correo electrnico al autor, 20 de junio de 2011.
33
24. Ibd.
preero estas reas olvidadas a las plazas entumecidas y los absurdos jardines
de esculturas.
Robert Morris, Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture24
34
Untitled, 1967-1986
Acero y malla de acero, 78,7 x 274,3 x 274,3 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Donacin de Edward R. Broida
35
36
37
Proyecto para Untitled Earthwork en Johnson Pit #30, City of Seatac, Seattle Washington, 1979
Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
38
El efecto ms importante del arte como recuperacin del territorio es que ste
puede y debe emplearse para deshacerse de la culpa tecnolgica. Estos enclaves
con cicatrices mineras o envenenados por los qumicos se parecen ahora menos
a las consecuencias de las acciones voraces e imprudentes de la industria y ms
a sus esperadas posibilidades estticas? Ser ms sencillo, en el futuro, destrozar
el entorno por una ltima paletada de energa no renovable si puede encontrarse
un artista (barato, claro) que luego transforme la devastacin en una obra de arte
moderna e inspiradora?25.
39
Li Shizhuo Striking Pine on a Sheer Cliff. lbum de paisaje de la dinasta Qing (1644-1911)
Hoja de lbum, tinta y acuarela montada en seda, 24,1 x 14,6 cm
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Adquirido por la generosidad de un donante annimo, F78-18/11
29. Ibd.
40
Sin ttulo (frotamiento corporal), 1993. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 51,4 x 43,2 cm
41
lado, pero no desde el otro. Dentro del laberinto se permite una paradoja: nos
perdemos para encontrarnos.
Robert Morris, The Labyrinth and the Urinal
42
30. Robert Morris: Size Matters. Critical Inquiry, vol. 26, no. 3 (Primavera), 2000.
31 Robert Morris: The Labyrinth and the Urinal. Critical Inquiry, vol. 36, no. 1, 2000.
43
32. Ibd.
44
33. Robert Morris: A Method for Sorting Cows. Art and Literature, 11, Invierno, 1967.
45
46
47
48
34 Edward F. Fry: Robert Morris in the Eighties, catlogo. Newport Harbor Museum, Newport Beach 1986.
49
50
51
35. Ibd.
52
53
54
55
56
38. Ibd.
57
58
59
60
8 TIEMPO DE CEGUERA
Simultneamente, y desde el otro lado desde el lado corporal, del lado del
cuerpo que habita su tiempo y espacio contemporneos, y no el de la memoria,
pero que, sin embargo, siente el impulso y la imposicin de la carga psquica de
la memoria tambin hay en estas obras un re-llamamiento o redenominacin
de un complejo conjunto de relaciones mediadas que slo podran haber brotado
tras toda una vida de preparacin.
Robert Morris, Czannes Mountains, Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, 1998
61
62
63
41
64
43. Alois Riegl: Die Sptrmische Kunstindustrie nach den Funden in sterreich-Ungarn. K. K. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Viena 1901.
Alois Riegl43.
65
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancola. Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 76,2 x 65,4 cm
66
67
45. Robert Morris: Have I Reasons, ed. Nena Tsouti-Schillinger. Duke University Press, Durham 2008.
46. Ibd.
47. Ibd.
Quizs el ngel del grabado de Durero es ciego. Quizs el ngel poda sentir en
su entorno la presencia del poliedro, la esfera, la rueda de molino, la campana.
Pero, qu podra aprender el ngel? Creo que la visin no es el tema de esta
imagen. En cualquier caso, no la visin literal. El ngel mira jamente hacia el
espacio. Sin ver o ciego. Quizs el ngel est pensando. Pero no podemos saber
en qu piensa45.
Los humanos estamos, segn Chomsky, en una jerarqua entre las ratas y los
ngeles. Una rata no podra salir de un laberinto que exigiese la aplicacin de
los nmeros primos. As que, por qu deberamos nosotros tener respuestas
68
48. Ibd.
69
70
71
51. Ibd.
marte se acaba.
72
73
54. Entrevista con Rosalind Krauss, Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem. Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Nueva York 1994.
74
Trabajar con los ojos vendados con tinta en mis manos y calculando el
sin separarme de los mrgenes verticales. Luego, empezando por las esquinas
inferiores, trabajar hacia arriba. A continuacin, horizontalmente por el margen
Trabajar con los ojos vendados con tinta en la mano izquierda y agua en
75
esta vez trabajar desde el margen derecho hacia el interior. Tras mis inseguros
intentos de cartograar y borrar simultneamente las manchas enroscadas, tratar
existencia y la prdida.
76
77
Primera pgina del artculo Aligned with Nazca de Morris, tal como apareci en la revista Artforum en octubre 1975
78
LNEAS DE VISIN
Jeffrey Weiss
1. Robert Morris: Aligned with Nazca. Artforum (octubre de 1975); reimpreso en Morris, Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris (Cambridge, Mass. Y Londres, Inglaterra,
1993): pp. 143-73.
2. Robert Smithson: Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan. Artforum (septiembre de 1969); reimpreso en Jack Flam ed., Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Berkeley, 1996): pp. 119-33.
79
3. Ibid., p. 125.
4. Morris: Aligned with Nazca, pp. 149-50.
5. Smithson: Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan, p. 119.
80
6. Richard Serra: Shift. Arts Magazine (abril de 1973); reimpreso en Richard Serra: Writings, Interviews (Chicago y London, 1994): 11.
7. Morris: Aligned with Nazca, pp. 151, 153.
8. Serra: Shift, p. 12.
81
Maria Reiche en la lnea espiral que forma la cola de un mono, cuyo dibujo completo se extiende a lo largo de ciento treinta y cinco metros.
Fotografa de Loren McIntyre publicada en el artculo Aligned with Nazca en Artforum, Octubre 1975.
9. bid., p. 13.
10. Morris: Aligned with Nazca, pp. 153-54.
11. Smithson: Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan, p. 119.
12. bid., pp. 125, 129.
82
13 bid., p. 120.
14 Serra: Shift, pp. 12-13.
83
84
Observatory, 1971-1977, Oostelijk Flevoland, the Netherlands. Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
85
Untitled (Labyrinth), 1974. Madera pintada y masonite. Altura: 243,8 cm, dimetro: 914,4 cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Nueva York. Coleccin Panza, 1991
Fotografa Erika Barahona Ede The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Nueva York
86
87
88
Blind Time I, 1973. Grato y aceite quemado sobre papel vitela, 88,9 x 116,8 cm
National Gallery of Art, Washington. Donacin del Comit de coleccionistas
27. Es importante reconocer que varias de esas esculturas de pequeo tamao (producidas entre 1961 y 1965) se componen de reglas y otras herramientas de medida, y que la medida, a su vez, hace
las veces de sistema de informacin, del que dependen la concepcin y fabricacin de los objetos construidos. Sin embargo, las pequeas esculturas estn cargadas de irona; de hecho, la mayora
de las reglas y artefactos de medicin parecen haber sido fabricados a mano por Morris para que fuesen facsmiles deliberadamente imprecisos. As que hemos de decir que mientras por un lado
desplegaba el sistema de medicin en un corpus de obras, por el otro, lo someta a interrogacin, desconanza y abuso.
28. Para obtener una visin ms completa de Permutations, consltese Michael Compton y David Sylvester, Robert Morris (catlogo de exposicin, The Tate Gallery, Londres, 1971): p. 69; y
Kimberly Paice, Permutation, 1967 en Robert Morris: The Mind/Body problem (catlogo de exposicin, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Nueva York, 1994): p. 180.
29. Para Scatter Piece, vase Jeffrey Weiss: Things Fall Apart en Untitled (Scatter Piece) 1968-69 (catlogo de exposicin, Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York, 2010), sp.
30. Morris, entrevista con Paul Cummings, sp.
89
31. Para un anlisis en mayor profundidad de los dibujos Blind Time, consltese fundamentalmente, Paice: Blind Time Drawings, 1973 en Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, p. 244; Kenneth
Surin: Morris Drawing Blindfolded en Robert Morris: Blind Time Drawings (catlogo de exposicin, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, Nueva York, 2003): pp. 10-17; y Jean-Pierre Criqui: Drawing from
the Heart of Darkness: Robert Morriss Blind Time en Robert Morris: Blind Time Drawings,1973-2000 (catlogo de exposicin, Centro per lArte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, 2005): pp. 11-26.
90
91
Box for Standing, 1961 Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
92
33. Morris: Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making: The Search for the Motivated. Artforum (abril de 1970): pp. 62-66; reimpreso en Morris, Continuous Project Altered Daily, pp. 71-93.
34. Kimberly Paice: Column, 1961 en Robert Morris: The Mind/BodyProblem, p. 90. El plan de derribar Column desde el interior se descart despus de que Morris se hiciese dao durante un
ensayo.
35. Vase la descripcin que Morris hace de los armarios en una carta a John Cage, reimpresa en Brandon Joseph: Robert Morris and John Cage: Reconstructing a Dialogue. October (verano de
1997): p. 66.
36. De Morris: Notes on Sculpture, Part 4, Beyond Objects. Artforum (abril de 1969), reimpreso en Morris, Continuous Project Altered Daily, p. 68.
93
94
Separate Walkways: The Wardens Above, the Inmates Below, 1978. Tinta sobre papel, 84,5 x 112,1 cm. Cortesa Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
95
44 Ibid., p. 173.
45 Morris: Aligned with Nazca, p. 160.
96
Sin duda la ceguera, la oscuridad, la soledad y el autoexamen han sido recursos para Beckett47. Pero dibujar
a ciegas es especialmente sorprendente: como proyecto
de largo recorrido, de forma sistemtica priva al dibujo
como prctica histrica de uno de los dos sentidos
97
PRIMEROS TRABAJOS
100
Magnetic Field (Campo magntico), 1962. Crayn sobre acetato, 21,3 x 28,3 cm
Regla, 1962. Grato sobre papel, 27,9 x 33 cm
101
Litanies of the Chariot de las notas de Marcel Duchamp para The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass, 1915-1923)
Una recitacin de dos horas y media de R. Morris, 2-18-61
Pelcula del dibujo original, 57,8 x 46,4 cm
102
21.3 (Performance en la que Morris hace playback (desincronizado) de una lectura de una clebre conferencia de 1939
sobre historia del arte a cargo de Erwin Panofsky y titulada Studies in Iconology), 1964
Hoja mecanograada sobre papel, 27,9 x 21,6 cm
103
MINIMALISMO
Sin ttulo (Dibujo para proyecto de escultura), 1965. Grato sobre papel, 27,9 x 21,6 cm
106
107
Sin ttulo (Dibujo para proyecto de escultura), 1965. Grato sobre papel, 21,6 x 27,9 cm
108
Pieza de acero corten (cuatro planchas 1,3 x 122 x 249 cm), 1969. Tinta y pastel sobre papel, 45,7 x 60,3 cm
Pieza de acero corten (Tres planchas 1,3 x 122 x 244 cm), 1969. Tinta y pastel sobre papel, 45,7 x 60,3 cm
109
110
Sin ttulo (Dibujo para escultura), 1969. Grato sobre papel, 45,7 x 61 cm
Cuatro planchas 7,6 x 1,5 x 3 m - Diez planchas 7,6 cm x 30 cm x 1,5 m, 1969. Grato sobre papel, 45,7 x 61 cm
111
Abrazaderas para sujetar de acero corten de 6 mm, 1969. Grato, lpiz pastel conte sobre papel, 45,7 x 60,3 cm
112
Placa de suelo (20 cm x 2,5 m x 2,5 m, 1961), 1972. Tinta y aguada sobre papel, 55,9 x 76,2 cm
Bloque colgante (20 cm x 2,4 m x 2,4 m, 1962), 1972. Tinta y aguada sobre papel, 55,9 x 76,2 cm
113
EARTHWORKS Y PROYECTOS
116
Proyecto Ottawa, 1969. Grato y tinta sobre papel cuadriculado, 45,7 x 76,8 cm
117
Sin ttulo (Proyecto Ottawa), 1969. rato sobre papel cuadriculado, 56 x 86,4 cm
Sin ttulo (Proyecto de teoras del tiempo), 1969. Grato sobre papel cuadriculado, 40,6 x 56,2 cm
118
Sin ttulo (Proyectos para la exposicin Spaces (Espacios) Museum of Modern Art, Nueva York, 30 de diciembre de 1969 - 1 de marzo de 1970), 1969
Grato sobre papel, 45,7 x 61 cm cada uno
119
Proyecto Ottawa, 1970. Grato sobre papel cuadriculado montado sobre tablero, 55,9 x 81,3 cm
120
121
Tres arados de acero, 1970. Grato sobre papel cuadriculado, 56,2 x 79,4 cm
122
123
124
125
126
Proyecto para Atlanta Arts Festival, Piedmont Park, 1981. Collage (dibujos, fotografas, cartas, tarjetas), 90,2 x 96,5 cm (montado sobre tablero)
127
128
129
Laberinto para Lyn, 1999. Tinta y aguada sobre Mylar, 90,8 x 96,5 cm
130
131
Dos propuestas (El laberinto del corazn y El laberinto de la oreja), 2006. Tinta sobre Mylar, 21,3 x 91,4 cm
El laberinto del corazn (Plano / Elevacin), 2006. Tinta sobre Mylar, 23,8 x 27,6 cm
132
Antepasado para Busan (Planos para un parque en Corea del Sur), 2008. Tinta sobre Mylar, 65,4 x 109,5 cm
133
RUBBINGS FROTAMIENTOS
Sin ttulo (frotamiento de objeto), 1973. Grato y encustico sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 89 x 116,8 cm
136
Sin ttulo (frotamiento de objeto), 1972. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 79,4 x 92,1 cm
137
Sin ttulo (frotamiento de objeto), 1972. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 91,8 x 61,3 cm
138
Rubbing of Leonardo Book (Frotamiento del libro de Leonardo), 1972. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 70,5 x 97,8 cm
139
Sin ttulo (frotamiento de objeto), 1973. Grato y aceite quemado sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 75,6 x 91,4 cm
140
Sin ttulo (frotamiento de objeto), 1973. Grato y aceite quemado sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 91,4 x 90,8 cm
141
Sin ttulo (frotamiento corporal), 1993. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 91,4 x 56,8 cm
142
Sin ttulo (frotamiento corporal), 1993. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio. 51,4 x 43,2 cm
143
Sin ttulo (frotamiento corporal), 1993. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 91,4 x 45,7 cm
144
Sin ttulo (frotamiento de objeto), 1973. Grato sobre papel de bra de vidrio, 85,1 x 91,4 cm
145
Tormenta de fuego prxima / segn el Diluvio de Leonardo, 1982. Grato, pigmentos en polvo, carboncillo sobre papel, 96,5 x 127 cm
148
Sin ttulo, de la serie Firestorm (Tormenta de fuego), 1982. Grato, pigmentos en polvo, carboncillo sobre papel, 254 x 289,6 cm
149
150
Sin ttulo, de la serie Firestorm (Tormenta de fuego), 1982. Grato, pigmentos en polvo, carboncillo sobre papel, 188 x 381 cm
151
LABERINTOS
Sin ttulo (Plano para laberinto triangular. Fattoria di Celle), 1983. Grato sobre papel, 45,7 x 61 cm
154
Sin ttulo (Laberinto circular), 1997. Tinta sobre Mylar, 37,8 x 39,4 cm
Laberinto de Berln, 1998. Tinta sobre Mylar, 21,6 x 62,5 cm
155
156
Sin ttulo (Laberinto oval), 1997-99. Tinta sobre Mylar, 59,1 x 69,9 cm
157
Dos laberintos de siete circuitos, 2007. Tinta sobre Mylar, 90,5 x 89,2 cm
158
159
MELANCOLA
Sin ttulo (El Coloso, segn Goya, crculo, tringulo, cuadrado, laberinto, pareja bailando), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 50,2 x 104,8 cm
162
Sin ttulo (I. Crculo II. Cuadrado. III. Tringulo), 1991. Grato sobre papel, 77,5 x 96,8 cm
163
164
APARTA LOS / OJOS / DE LO ESCPTICO / Y MASCULLA, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 54 x 36 cm (cada uno)
165
CUANDO PAS DE / LOS TRES DOGMAS / DEL EMPIRISMO, 2006. Tinta sobre Mylar, 36,5 x 51,8 cm (cada uno)
166
167
168
Blind Sight (Visin ciega), 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 92,7 x 107,3 cm
169
Sin ttulo (Tres mujeres, segn Goya), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 25,1 x 16,2 cm
Sin ttulo (Busto de hombre sentado, guras segn Goya), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 31,8 x 23,3 cm
172
Sin ttulo (El Coloso segn Goya, y dos grupos de guras en primer plano), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 27,3 x 51,4 cm
173
Sin ttulo (Soldados, laberinto, hombre sentado), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 61 x 41,3 cm
Sin ttulo (Figuras luchando, segn Goya), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 44,5 x 26,7 cm
174
Sin ttulo (Pres. G.W. Bush, luna/planeta, esqueleto segn Goya), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 45,7 x 32,4 cm
175
Sin ttulo (Par de gures, segn Goya, crculo, laberinto, hombres a la mesa), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 32,4 x 37,8 cm
176
Sin ttulo (Madonna actuando, mscara, segn Goya, poltico), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 39,1 x 43,2 cm
177
Sin ttulo (El Coloso de Goya, soldado), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 26 x 37,5 cm
178
Investigaciones (Compara con esto la idea: la gura mnmica se distingue de otras guras mentales por una especial marca caracterstica), 1990
Grato sobre Mylar, 61 x 50,8 cm (tamao del paspart)
179
Sin ttulo (Gente, prisionero, laberinto, polticos), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 54 x 46 cm
180
Investigaciones (Pero a qu? Esto no se dice. Es como si slo requiriera una alusin; como si ya lo supiramos. Como si una explicacin fuera
innecesaria, porque ya conocemos la cuestin de todos modos), 1990
Grato sobre papel vitela, 50,8 x 61 cm
181
Sin ttulo (segn Goya, Disparate matrimonial...), 1996. Tinta sobre Mylar, 14,9 x 20,6 cm
Sin ttulo (segn Goya, Los disparates: Los encadenados y Caballo raptor), 1996. Tinta sobre Mylar, 14,9 x 19,7 cm
182
Sin ttulo (segn Goya, Los disparates: Caballo raptor y Disparate conocido), 1996. Tinta sobre Mylar, 14,6 x 21 cm
Sin ttulo (segn Goya, Los disparates: Disparate de miedo y Disparate de Carnaval), 1996. Tinta sobre Mylar, 16,2 x 21 cm
183
Sin ttulo (segn Goya, Los Disparates: Caballo raptor, La lealtad y Disparate conocido), 1996. Tinta sobre Mylar, 22,2 x 29,8 cm
184
Sin ttulo (segn Goya), 1996. Tinta y aguada sobre papel, 27,6 x 35,2 cm
185
Sin ttulo (Bestia leyendo segn Goya, soldados cados), 1998. Grato y fotocopia sobre papel, 48,3 x 27,6 cm
Sin ttulo (Soldados en el campo de batalla, Bestia leyendo segn Goya), 1998. Grato y transferencia de fotocopia sobre papel, 58,7 x 22,2 cm
186
Sin ttulo (Foto de familia y Saturno segn Goya), 1998. Grato y fotocopia sobre papel, 49,5 x 12,4 cm
187
Sin ttulo (Bestia leyendo y hombre con bastn segn Goya), 1998-99. Grato y fotocopia sobre papel, 21,9 x 35,6 cm
Sin ttulo (pareja bailando, foto de familia y Bestia leyendo, segn Goya), 1998-99. Grato y transferencia de fotocopia sobre papel, 41,3 x 58,4 cm
188
Sin ttulo (Foto de familia, laberinto y un hombre con un bastn segn Goya), 1999. Grato y fotocopia sobre papel, 27,3 x 49,5 cm
189
Sin ttulo (Fotografa de grupo y segn Goya), 2000. Fotocopia, pintura en barra y encustica sobre papel, 40,6 x 47,9 cm
190
Sin ttulo (El Coloso, segn Goya, hombre sentado, dos grupos de hombres), 1999. Grato sobre Mylar, 49,5 x 45,1 cm
191
Sin ttulo (El Coloso, segn Goya, foto de pareja), 2000. Fotocopia, cera y grato sobre papel, 35,2 x 34,9 cm
192
Sin ttulo (El Coloso, segn Goya, foto de familia, siluetas de perles), ca. 2000. Fotocopia, encustica y grato sobre papel, 30,5 x 38,1 cm
193
Sin ttulo (Bestia leyendo, segn Goya, fotografa de grupo), 2001. Grato y transferencia de fotocopia sobre papel, 38,7 x 43,2 cm
194
Sin ttulo (Laberinto, Bestia leyendo de Goya, pareja bailando), 2001. Grato y transferencia de fotocopia sobre papel, 21,9 x 24,1 cm
195
Tristes pensamientos de lo que ha de acontecer (de Los desastres de la guerra), 2006. 6 hojas de tinta sobre Mylar, 207 x 274,3 cm (totalidad)
196
Qu locura! (de Los desastres de la guerra), 2006. 6 hojas de tinta sobre Mylar, 200,7 x 274,3 cm (totalidad)
197
Sin ttulo (Pollock pintando y Morris, Schneemann en Site), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 43,8 x 34,9 cm
200
Sin ttulo (Pollock pintando y Morris, Schneemann en Site), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 46 x 45,7 cm
201
Inability to Endure or Deny the World (Incapacidad para soportar o negar el mundo)
(Hombre con SIDA, segn La muerte y la doncella de Durero), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 33 x 34,3 cm
202
Sin ttulo (segn Hopper), 1990. Grato sobre Mylar, 45,7 x 41,9 cm
203
Sin ttulo (Laberinto y Mont Sainte-Victoire, segn Czanne), 2007. Grato y transferencia de fotocopia sobre papel, 43,5 x 46,4 cm
204
Sin ttulo (Laberinto y Mont Sainte-Victoire, segn Czanne), 2007. Grato y transferencia de fotocopia sobre papel, 61,6 x 41,3 cm
205
CARCERAE / CARCINOMA
In the Realm of the Carceral. Security Walls (En el reino de lo carcelario. Muros de seguridad), 1978
Tinta sobre papel, 90,2 x 118,1 cm
209
In the Realm of the Carceral. The Hot and Cold Pools of Persuasion (En el reino de lo carcelario. Los estanques de persuasin calientes y fros), 1978.
Tinta sobre papel, 116,5 x 90,2 cm (montado sobre tablero, dimensiones del tablero)
210
In the Realm of the Carceral. The Walled Grounds of Parades and Punishments
(En el reino de lo carcelario. Las tierras amuralladas de desles y castigos), 1978. Tinta sobre papel, 112,1 x 83,8 cm
211
212
213
214
Carcinoma of Stomach (Carcinoma de estmago), 1990. Tinta sobre papel, 70,8 x 64,1 cm
215
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancholia (Melancola). Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 76,2 x 65,4 cm
218
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancholia (Melancola). Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 73,7 x 76,2 cm
219
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancholia (Melancola). Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 71,1 x 76,2 cm
220
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancholia (Melancola). Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 68,9 x 76,2 cm
221
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancholia (Melancola). Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 61,6 x 76,2 cm
222
Blind Time V (Tiempo de ceguera V), Melancholia (Melancola). Sin ttulo, 1999. Tinta sobre Mylar, 75,9 x 62,5 cm
223
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Identity (Identidad), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 63,5 x 106,4 cm
224
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Clio & Co., 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 80 x 96,5 cm
225
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Chaos (Caos moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,6 cm
226
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Voice (Voz moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,3 cm
227
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Solitude (Soledad moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,3 cm
228
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Crime (Crimen moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,3 cm
229
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Wound (Herida moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,3 cm
230
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Fear (Miedo moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,3 cm
231
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Light (Luz moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107 cm
232
Blind Time VI (Tiempo de ceguera VI), Moral Blinds (Subterfugios morales). Moral Drift (Deriva moral), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 107,3 cm
233
Blind Time VII (Tiempo de ceguera VII), Interrogation (Interrogacin). Waterboarding (Ahogamiento simulado), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 106,7 cm
234
Blind Time VII (Tiempo de ceguera VII), Lamentations (Lamentaciones). Pile On (Amontonaos), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 109,2 x 91,4 cm
235
Blind Time VII (Tiempo de ceguera VII), Interrogation (Interrogacin). Naked Dogs (Desnudo perros), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 109,2 x 91,4 cm
236
Blind Time VII (Tiempo de ceguera VII), Lamentations (Lamentaciones). Rats & Angels (Ratas & ngeles), 2006. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 109,2 cm
237
Blind Time VII (Tiempo de ceguera VII), Interrogation (Interrogacin). Enhanced Interrogation (Interrogacin intensicada), 2000
Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 108 cm
238
Blind Time VII (Tiempo de ceguera VII), Interrogation (Interrogacin). Electric Testes (Testes elctricos), 2000. Tinta sobre Mylar, 91,4 x 109,2 cm
239
TERROR
Morning Terror (Terror matutino), 2000. Encustica, paspart y gasa sobre papel, 54,6 x 48,3 cm
242
Techno Terror (Terror tecno), 2000. Encustica, paspart sobre papel, 80 x 97,5 cm
243
Standard Terror (Terror estndar), 2000. Encustica, paspart sobre papel, 78,7 x 112,4 cm
244
CUADERNO DE DIBUJO
246
247
248
249
250
251
253
254
255
256
El texto arriba recogido es, excepto por pequeas modicaciones, la versin original de aqul publicado en ingls como
una introduccin al catlogo de exposicin The drawings of Robert Morris, organizada por Thomas Krens y The
Williams College Museum of Art y que fue publicado en 1982.
257
259
1. Declaraciones recogidas en 1978 por Thomas Krens y reproducidas en The Triumph of Entropy , su texto para el catlogo de la exposicin organizada por Rosalind Krauss, Robert Morris: The Mind
/ Body Problem, Nueva York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994, p. XIX (siempre que no se indique lo contrario, la traduccin ser la ma).
260
261
.
4. Ver el ensayo de Rosalind Krauss, The Mind / Body Problem : Robert Morris in Series en el catlogo Robert Morris : The Mind / Body Problem, op. cit., p. 2-17, as como, ms ampliamente, el
captulo consagrado al arte minimalista de su libro Passages. Une histoire de la sculpture de Rodin Smithson, (1977), traducido por C. Brunet, Paris, Macula, 1997. Dichos anlisis se basan en los
textos publicados por Morris a partir de la mitad de los aos sesenta y estn disponibles en su antologa Continuous Project Altered Daily. The Writings of Robert Morris, Cambridge (Mass.), The
MIT Press, 1993. Para tener distintas visiones sobre la serie Blind Time propiamente dicha, consultar el catlogo Robert Morris : Blind Time Drawings, New York, Haim Chanin Fine Arts, 2003, que
contiene los textos de Nena Tsouti-Schillinger y de Kenneth Surin.
5. Aplicacin de un mtodo ya descrito por Platn que desprecia por supuesto una creacin de las cosas sin verdadera existencias: Siempre que consientas a llevar de un lado a otro un espejo en
la mano habrs creado un sol y lo que hay en el cielo, una tierra y a ti mismo as como el resto: animales, objetos fabricados, plantas y todo sobre lo que hablbamos antes. (La Repblica, X, 596,
traducido por L. Robin in Platon, Obras completas, vol. I., Paris, Gallimard, La Plyada, 1950, p. 1206.)
262
6. La conmocin por el rol de la visin en la produccin de la obra conllevan, por parte del espectador, unas nuevas modalidades de mirada. Esto fue demostrado por Yve-Alain Bois con respecto
a Matisse, en un texto llamado precisamente La Ceguera, catlogo Henri Matisse 1904-1917, Paris, Centre Pompidou, 1993, p. 12-56.
7. Correo electrnico enviado al autor, 22 de mayo 2004.
8 Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making : The Search for the Motivated , Continuous Project Altered Daily, op. cit., p.73.
263
9. Pido prestada esta expresin a Walter Benjamin, cuya pluma calica en su obra sobre Kafka de 1934: La obra entera de Kafka es un catlogo de gestos que no poseen para el autor un sentido
simblico determinado pero que se retoman constantemente en nuevos contextos, en nuevos arreglos experimentales alrededor de un sentido (Franz Kafka. Por el dcimo aniversario de su
muerte), traducido por P. Rusch en uvres II, Paris, Gallimard, Folio, 2000, p. 424-425). Asimismo, Gustav Janouch nos ensea que el autor de La Metamorfosis le confes un da: Mis historias
son una manera de cerrar los ojos (Conversaciones con Kafka, traducido oir B. Lortholary, Paris, Maurice Nadeau, 1978, p. 38).
10. Este dibujo conservado en el Louvre, es un estudio sobre la gura del Error en el cuadro Le Temps dcouvrant la Vrit, pintado alrededor de 1702 y que fue comentado por Jacques Derrida en
Mmoires daveugle. Lautoportrait et autres ruines (Paris, Runionn des Muses Nationaux, 1990) y del que recomiendo la lectura con respecto a los temas entrelazados del dibujo y de la ceguera.
Existe un vnculo, con respecto a una retrica de la ceguera en la losofa y la crtica literaria realizada por Derrida, con el libro de Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight (segunda edicin revisada,
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1983, ver p. 102-141), cuyo ttulo podra resumir de manera admirable los Blind Time Drawings. En cuanto a la dimensin heurstica del error en el
pensamiento del Siglo de las Luces (ya que, como cita Man, la interpretacin no es otra cosa que la posibilidad del error) y ms ampliamente para una reexin sobre una posible historia del
error, recomiendo a David W. Bates, Enlightenment Aberrations. Error and Revolution in France, Ithaca et Londres, Cornell University Press, 2002 (en cuya tapa se encuentra el dibujo de Coypel).
Agradezco a ric Vigne el haberme hecho descubrir esta obra.
264
265
11. Jonathan Fineberg, Robert Morris Looking Back: An Interview, Arts Magazine, septiembre de 1980, p. 114-115. Entrevista grabada en 1977.
12. Correo electrnico enviado al autor, 20 de mayo de 2004.
266
13. Ver el bello libro de Jacqueline Lichtenstein, La tache aveugle. Essais sur les relations de la peinture et de la sculpture lge moderne, Paris, Gallimard, 2003. El problema
de Molyneux se reere a la posibilidad de un reconocimiento puramente visual de una esfera y de un cubo con un volumen equivalente de los que el tacto hubiera
permitido la identicacin anteriormente. La respuesta positiva se basa normalmente en la idea aristotlica de los sensibles comunes, es decir, cualidades de objetos
perceptibles por varios sentidos movimiento, tamao, nmero que pueden percibirse mediante la vista y el tacto; el color y el sonido no lo son: sensibles propios. ste
es un tema siempre candente y que nos remite a la obra colectiva dirigida por Jolle Proust, Perception et intermodalit. Approches actuelles de la question de Molyneux, Paris,
PUF, 1997.
267
268
15. Cuando, por ejemplo, el mundo de los objetos claros y articulados se encuentra abolido, nuestro ser perceptivo amputado de su mundo dibuja una espacialidad sin
cosas. Esto sucede durante la noche. No es un objeto ante m, me envuelve, penetra todos mis sentidos, asxia mis recuerdos y borra incluso mi identidad personal. Ya no
estoy suprimido de mi puesto perceptivo para poder ver deslar a distancia los perles de los objetos. La noche no tiene perles, me afecta y su unidad es la unidad mstica
del mana (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phnomnologie de la perception, Paris, Gallimard, 1945, p. 328).
16. Sigmund Freud, La Interpretacin de los Sueos, traducido por I. Meyerson, edicin aumentada y revisada por D. Berger, Paris, PUF, 1967, p. 274: La manera en la que
el sueo expresa sus categoras de oposicin y de contradiccin es realmente sorprendente: no las expresa, parece ignorar el no. Rene a los contrarios y los representa en
un solo objeto. El sueo representa a menudo un elemento cualquiera por su deseo contrario, de manera que no se puede saber si un elemento del sueo, susceptible de
contradiccin, traiciona un contenido positivo o negativo en el pensamiento del sueo.
269
17. Ibid. Bajo el ttulo, On est pri de fermer les yeux, Max Milner dedica todo un libro a las paradojas de la mirada prohibida en literatura (Paris, Gallimard, 1991).
18. Las obras de arte otan en la supercie de un ocano de palabras : as comenzaba en 1973 Some Splashes in the Ebb Tide, uno de los textos en los que Morris trata esta
intrincacin del arte y del lenguaje (retomado en Continuous Project Altered Daily, op. cit., p. 119-141). He tratado el estatuto del texto en el trabajo de Morris en Note
lacunaire sur Robert Morris et la question de lcriture. Un trou dans la vie. Essais sur lart depuis 1960, Paris Descle de Brouwer, 2002, p. 55-78. La gura del laberinto,
omnipresente en su obra, tiene relacin con el lenguaje y es un eco de la observacin de Wittgenstein : El lenguaje es un laberinto de caminos. Llegas a un sitio por un
algn lado y te acuerdas; pero llegas al mismo sitio por otro lado y ya no te acuerdas (Recherches philosphiques, traducido por F. Dastur, M. lie, J.-L. Gautero, D. Janicaud ,
. Rigal, Paris, Gallimard, 2004, 203, p. 127). En cuanto al laberinto de Morris, consultar Maurice Berger, Labyrinths. Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s, New York,
Harper & Row, 1989, y ms recientemente la obra de Morris Threading the Labyrinth, October, n 96, primavera 2002, p. 61-70.
19. Estas dos obras fueron traducidas al francs por P. Engel en 1993: Actions et vnements (Paris, PUF), Enqutes sur la vrit et linterprtation (Nmes, Jacqueline
Chambon). En cuanto a los Blind Time IV, obsrvense las reexiones de Davidson, Le troisime homme, traducido por P. Engel, Les Cahiers du Muse national dart
moderne, n 53, otoo 1995, p. 25-31, y de Morris crire avec Davidson , traducido por Y. Abrioux, Ibid., p. 33-43. Los dos artculos se acompaan de reproducciones de
los Blind Time IV y de la traduccin de sus textos.
270
20. Sobre la cuestin de las reglas, consultar a Robert Morris, Professional Rules , Critical Inquiry, n 23, invierno 1997, p. 298-322.
271
21. En un texto titulado Czannes Mountains (Critical Inquiry, n 24, primavera 1998, p. 814-829), Morris retomar las nociones cruzadas de tacto y ceguera en algunas
lneas (p. 827-828) y que hacen surgir sus propios Blind Time Drawings: El espacio conseguido por Czanne es un espacio inestable. En las Sainte-Victoire, donde se
observa un principio de prdida de identidad de los objetos, el espacio comienza a comprimirse. El sentimiento provocado por estas obras es a la vez majestuoso y ansioso
y se compone a la vez de terror y de alivio. Es el sentimiento de una ceguera naciente para la que nos disponemos a perder el mundo visual y a sus objetos, los terrores
y las exigencias que estos nos imponen. El mundo visual de la profundidad y de los objetos se cambia por otro proporcionado por el algoritmo hptico. Este paisaje se
transforma en un abismo en el que la profundidad visual se oscurece con el tacto, donde el tacto se identica como color, como si el tacto pudiera leer el color, como si el
color fuera accesible mediante el tacto, o como si la misma Mnemosina llegara mediante los toques de color. La elisin de los objetos a favor de los toques de color que
saturan el campo visual no se deriva de una posicin emprica que valore las sensaciones en detrimento de los objetos y que no teoriza el espacio de la abstraccin. Las
Sainte-Victoire estn en el umbral de esta nueva fase. Se encuentran a la entrada del mundo visual de su cierre, del mundo a punto de fundirse en este espacio de ceguera
donde la profundidad desaparece en pro del tacto, de los toques indecisos del duelo y del adis, que son las marcas de sus ltimas obras.
22. Correo electrnico enviado al autor, 20 de mayo de 2004.
272
23. Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky y Fritz Saxl, Saturne et la mlancolie (1964), traduccin de F. Durand-Bogaert y L. Evrard, Paris, Gallimard, 1989.
273
274
24. Ver tambin Robert Morris, From a Chomskian Couch : The Imperialistic Unconscious , Critical Inquiry, n 29, verano de 2003, p. 678-694 (sesin de un anlisis
cticio con el Dr. Chomsky donde cada intervencin de este ltimo est sacada de uno de sus libros).
25. Ver Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, nueva edicin revisada y aumentada, Pars, Albin Michel, 2002.
275
El texto arriba recogido es, excepto por pequeas modicaciones, la versin original de aqul publicado en ingls bajo el
ttulo Drawing from the Heart of Darkness : Robert Morriss Blind Time en J.-P. Criqui (dir.), Robert Morris: Blind
Time Drawings 1973-2000, Gttingen, Steidl, 2005. Este libro sali a la luz a raz de la exposicin Robert Morris
(27/2-29/5 2005) organizada por el autor mismo en el museo de arte contemporneo Luigi Pecci de Prato (C Arte
Prato), que reuni por primera vez unos ochenta Blind Time Drawings provenientes de las seis series que constituyen
el conjunto del corpus.
276
CRONOLOGA
2006
Robert Morris, Lieu dArt Contemporain en
asociacin con Lalya Moget, Aude, Francia,
23 de junio 24 de septiembre
Waxing Time, Waning Light, Leo Castelli
Gallery, Nueva York, 3 de noviembre 22 de
diciembre
2005
Robert Morris: Early Sculpture, Sprth Magers,
Londres, 22 de junio 30 de Julio
Robert Morris, Centro per lArt
Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italia, 27 de
febrero 29 de mayo
Small Fires and Mnemonic Nights, Leo Castelli
Gallery, 28 de enero 19 de marzo
2002
Crisis and War and Memory and Dancing and
other Drawings, Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva
York, 22 de febrero 4 de abril
2000
Robert Morris: A Retrospective, Instituto
Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM),
Valencia, Espaa
Robert Morris: Selected Drawings, Dorskey
Museum of Art, New Paltz, Nueva York
Robert Morris. Early Felts, Leo Castelli Gallery,
Nueva York
277
1994
Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem,
Guggenheim Museum, Nueva York
1985
Robert Morris, Sonnabend Gallery, Nueva York
1993
Akira Ikeda Gallery, Taura, Japn
1984
Robert Morris Drawings, Malmo Konsthall,
Malmo, Suecia (organizada por el Williams
College Museum of Art)
Robert Morris: Recent Felt Pieces, Galerie
Nordenhake, Malmo, Suecia
1980
Waddington Galleries II, Londres
Robert Morris: Major Sculpture, Drawings and
New Felt Pieces, Richard Hines Gallery, Seattle,
Washington
Robert Morris: First Study for View From a
Corner of Orion (Night) and Second Study
for View From A Corner of Orion (Day), Leo
Castelli Gallery, 142 Greene Street, Nueva York
The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
1979
Six Mirror Works, Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva
York
In the Realm of the Carceral, Ileana Sonnabend
Gallery, Nueva York
Robert Morris: Mirror Works and Drawings,
Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio
1978
Galleria Civica dArte Moderna, Ferrara, Italia
1977
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art,
Humlebaek, Dinamarca
1976
Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
1975
Galleria DAlessandro-Ferranti, Roma
278
1974
Institute of Contemporary Art, University of
Pennsylvania, Filadela, Pensilvania
Sonnabend Gallery, Nueva York
Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
Galerie Art in Progress, Mnich, Alemania
Alessandra Castelli Gallery, Milan, Italia
Grand Rapids Project, Belknap Park, Grand
Rapids, Michigan
1973
Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Pars
1957
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, California
Exposiciones colectivas
2008
Summer Group Show, Shoja Azari y Shahram
Karimi, Diana Kingsley, Heidi McFall, Doug
and Mike Starn, con The Birthday Boy, una
instalacin de vdeo de Robert Morris, Leo
Castelli GalleryNueva York, 2 de junio 28 de
julio
Wall Sculptures, Richard Artschwager, Donald
Judd, Robert Morris, Salvatore Scarpitta,
Richard Serra, Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva
York, 15 de enero 23 de febrero
1968
Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven,
Pases Bajos
Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Pars
Felt Pieces, Galerie Ileana Sonnabend, Pars
2002
From Pop to Now. Selections from the
Sonnabend Collection, Tang Teaching
Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College,
Saratoga Springs, Nueva York
2001
Saying Seeing 4 from the sixties, Leo Castelli
Gallery, 59 East 79th Street, Nueva York
1966
Dwan Gallery, Los ngeles, California
1965
Green Gallery, Nueva York
1964
Galerie Schmela, Dusseldorf, Alemania
Green Gallery, Nueva York
1996
Hunter College Art Department Faculty
Exhibition, Art Gallery in the Hunter College
Fine Arts Building, Nueva York
Omaggio a Leo Castelli, Da Rauschenberg a
Warhol, da Flavin a Judd, negli anni Sessanta,
20 artisti a New York, Civiche Raccolte dArte,
Padiglione dArte Contemporanea, Miln, Italia
1995
Attitudes/Sculptures, 1963-1972, CAPC, Musee
dart Contemporain, Burdeos, Francia
1994
Some Kind of Fact, Some Kind of Fiction,
Sperone Westwater Gallery, Nueva York
1963
Green Gallery, Nueva York
1993
Gravity and Grace: The Changing Condition
of Sculpture 1965-1975, Hayward Gallery,
Londres
1958
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, California
279
Visions/Revisions: Contemporary
Representations, The Marlborough Gallery,
Nueva York
1989
Jannis Kounellis, Robert Morris, Robert
Rauschenberg, Sonnabend Gallery, Nueva York
280
1983
1984 - A Preview, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts,
Nueva York
1985
Art Minimal I, CAPC, Musee dArt
Contemporain, Burdeos, Francia
281
1982
Tulane University, Nueva Orleans, Luisiana
1980
Leo Castelli: A New Space, Leo Castelli, 142
Greene Street, Nueva York
Three Installations: Acconci, Morris,
Oppenheim, Sonnabend Gallery, Nueva York
Hidden Desires, Neuberger Museum, State
University of New York en Purchase, Nueva
York
Sculpture on the Wall: Relief Sculpture of the
Seventies, Fine Arts Center, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts
Explorations in the 70s, Pittsburgh Plan for
Art, Pittsburgh, Pensilvania
Fabric Into Art, Amelia A. Wallace Gallery, New
York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury,
Nueva York
American Sculpture: Gifts of Howard & Jean
Lipman, Whitney Museum of American Art,
Nueva York
Drawings/Structures, Institute of
Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts
282
1973
New Yorks Finest, Max Protetch Gallery,
Washington, DC
283
1970
Spaces, Museum of Modern Art, Nueva York
1969
Plastics and New Art, Institute of
Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania,
Filadela, Pensilvania
284
1968
2nd Buffalo Festival of the Arts Today, AlbrightKnow Gallery, Buffalo, Nueva York
1965
Shape & Structure, Tibor de Nagy Gallery,
Nueva York
1967
Ten Years, Leo Castelli Gallery, Nueva York
Color, Image and Form, The Detroit Institute
of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
American Sculpture of the Sixties, Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, Los ngeles,
California; Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Filadela, Pensilvania
New Sculpture and Shaped Canvas, California
State College, Los ngeles, California
The 1960s: Painting and Sculpture from the
Museum Collection, Museum of Modern Art,
Nueva York
International Institute Torcuato di Telli,
Buenos Aires, Brasil (Primer premio)
Kompas III, Stedlijk Van Abbemuseum,
Eindoven, Holanda
5th International Exhibition, Guggenheim
Museum, Nueva York; Art Gallery of Ontario,
Toronto, Ontario, Canad; National Gallery of
Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canad; Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts (Premio de adquisicin
de obra), Montreal, Quebec, Canad
1966
The Other Tradition, Institute of
Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania,
Filadela, Pensilvania
Primary Structures, Jewish Museum, Nueva
York
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1999
Cherix, Christophe: Robert Morris: Estampes
et Multiples 1952-1998 (catlogo razonado).
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1993
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(catlogo de exposicin). The Aldrich
Museum of Contemporary Art.
1990
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Inability to Endure or Deny the World. The
Corcoran Gallery or Art, Washington, DC.
1983
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1989
Karmel, Pepe - Berger, Maurice Sokolowski,
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Grey Gallery and Art Center, New York
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Yau, John: Repetition. Hirschl & Adler Modern
Art, Nueva York.
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1988
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Minimal: Coleccin Panza. Centro de Arte
Reina Sofa, Madrid.
1980
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neue Kunst, Zrich.
1987
Coleccin Sonnabend. Centro de Arte Reina
Sofa, Madrid.
1979
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de Robert Morris, Leo Castelli Inc., Nueva
York, edicin limitada de 2.000 ejemplares.
1986
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An American Renaissance: Painting & Sculpture
Since 1940. Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale,
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1978
Probing the Earth Contemporary Land Projects.
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC.
1977
Robert Morris, Compton, Michael & Sylvester,
David (Tate Gallery Art Series), Barron
Probing the Earth; Contemporary Land Projects,
John Beardsley, Washington, DC, Smithsonian
Institution Press, pp. 56 63.
1974
Robert Morris, prlogo de Bernard Ceysson,
Muse dArt et dIndustrie, Saint Etienne,
Francia.
1971
Robert Morris. Tate Gallery Publications Dept.,
The Bernie Press, Londres, Reino Unido.
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Das Ding als Objeht, prlogo de Willy Rotzler.
Kunsthalle Nurberg aur Marientor.
Chance and Art, ensayo de Robert PincusWitten. Pennsylvania University Institute of
Contemporary Art, Filadela, Pensilvania.
Hanging/Leaning, prlogo de Robert R.
Liltman, (dibujos e instrucciones para la obra
de pared y suelo), Emily Low Gallery, Hofstra
University.
1969
Op Losse Schroeven. Stedelijk Museum,
msterdam.
Earth Art, Andrew Dickson White Museum of
Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, Nueva York.
Robert Morris, ensayo de Annette Michelson,
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Plastics and the New Art, ensayo de Stephen S.
Prokopoff, Pennsylvania University Institute of
Contemporary Art, Filadela, Pensilvania.
When Attitudes Become Form, declaraciones
de Harold Szeemann, Scott Burton y Gregoire
Muller, Kunsthalle, Berna.
Der Raum in der Amerikanischen Kunst,
prlogo de Felix Andreas Bauman, Kunsthaus,
Zrich.
Joseph Kosuth - Robert Morris. Laura Knott
Gallery, Bradford Junior College, Bradford,
Massachusetts.
Soft Art. New Jersey State Museum, Trenton,
Nueva Jersey.
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Paul Mocsanyi Art Center, School for Social
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Models, University of Minnesota, Minepolis,
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---, Kunst Uber Kunst. Kolnischer
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1980
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Yorker, vol. 43, 25 de febrero, pp. 99-109.
---, Obvious Forms and a Boom in Boxes.
Life Magazine, 28 de julio, pp. 40-44.
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vol. 41, marzo, pp. 26-31.
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americaine. Aujourdhui, vol. 10, diciembre
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11, 20 de febrero, pp. 56-62.
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Hudson Review, vol. 20, primavera, pp. 91-99.
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Arts Magazine, vol. 41, abril, pp. 44-47.
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and Technology Program. The Los Angeles
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febrero, pp. 24-31.
COLECCIONES:
291
TRADUCCIONES
DRAWING REFLECTIONS
Consuelo Cscar Casabn
Director of the IVAM
A word is a sign, but a sign does not have to be a word, it can be a line in a drawing,
a note in a concerto, a shadow in a photograph.
Umberto Eco
Like our ancestors, who found drawing to be the most forceful form of
expression for displaying and verbalising their ideas, Morris feels that
with the strokes he draws he can write poetry that illuminates scenes
and provokes reection. This principle of appreciating word as icon
and icon as word is something that we must keep very much in mind,
understanding that there is not just one linear language in his work but
many languages of a polymorphic nature.
The 1960s were years that led up to the introduction of new social
and cultural changes. Post-war European society took important steps
towards liberties and rights in every area of individual development.
In this setting of social struggle and demands for new possibilities, art
experienced a regeneration related to the utopian avant-gardes of the
1900s and adopted a more reactionary, more anti-system attitude. Art
movements and young rebels expressed similar ideas, giving rise to many
new movements including Fluxus, Arte Povera, Poetic Realism and Pop
Art and declarations such as Baselitzs Pandemonium manifestos,
and this in turn led to new ways of understanding art that were closer to
everyday life and to thought and the conceptual world.
Robert Morris (Kansas City, 1931) felt at ease with this new unrestricted
openness and morphological promiscuity, which was enhanced by
the introduction of new technical media, and he became a pioneer in
previously unexplored elds which received names such as Conceptual
Art, Minimalism, Land Art, performances, video installations and so on.
The exhibition that we are now presenting at the IVAM is a celebration
of 50 years of activity by this respected and renowned American sculptor.
And for it I decided to ask Barbara Rose, the curator of the exhibition
and a friend of Robert Morris, to rescue the drawings that he has been
making throughout his life and that he had not considered showing until
relatively recently. Barbara was the only person capable of carrying out
this task because of her ability as a historian and her great friendship
with Morris.
So in this case it is not sculpture that shoulders the burden of his artistic
discourse but the drawings that he has made and kept in his studio, from
the time when he was beginning as an artist to the present day, which we
can now interpret like musical scores that set out the key components
of his thinking. He took a very active part in the Fluxus movement at
the start of his career, and in that context he succeeded in introducing
principles and strategies for a new way of understanding an antibourgeois form of art that broadened its boundaries by breaking away
from the traditional mould. This new burgeoning of creativity soon led
to action that set in motion ideas characterised by their emphasis on the
principle of temporality.
FOREWORD
Jos Luis Olivas Martnez
President of Bancaja
Yet we should never forget that those works that have acquired greatest fame
belong to a vaster collection of works of art, many of them almost unknown
to the general public, which form part of the very process of creation.
This observation is fully conrmed when we take a detailed look at the
retrospective survey of works on paper by Robert Morris (Kansas City,
1931) that the IVAM is now presenting in Valencia, corresponding to the
period from 1960 to 2010.
The retrospective that we now have the pleasure of seeing includes works
from his Blind Time series (his best-known drawings), reinterpretations
of Goya (the later works) and an installation of Morriss monumental
drawings of the disasters of the wars and massacres of the twentieth and
295
in drawing, as well as changing its scale from that of the page to that
of the mural. His amplied denition of drawing as an autonomous
and major means of expression drew on his knowledge of the history
and forms of both Western and Asian art. No given style, but rather a
consistent attitude of doubt and skepticism characterizes his attempts to
use drawing as a means to explore and dene the boundaries of the self
both in physical space as well as in the ineffable realm of consciousness.
This search for self-denition takes place primarily within the context
of a redenition of the means, modes, and functions of drawing as an
autonomous discipline, split off from its traditional relationship to
painting, sculpture, and architecture and redened as a form of both
existential as well as phenomenological exploration.
1 FIRST PREMISES
I am my drawings, for better or worse. Who we are will, I am sure, be dened very differently
in the future.
Throughout his long and fruitful career, Robert Morris has dened
drawing in many different ways: as philosophical investigation,
conceptual premise, preparatory sketch, working diagram, record of
physical processes, and ultimately as the principal means to resolve
aesthetic problems. This exhibition reveals how Morris has redened the
traditional medium to plot his journey as an artist as well as to think
through the major issues confronting avant-garde art in the transition
from high modernism to postmodernism.
Robert Morris, who was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in the heart
of the American Midwest in 1931, did not intend to be an artist. His
ambition was to play major league professional baseball, which makes his
concern with bodies in motion a logical consequence of his involvement
with athletics. As a teenager he traveled around the Midwest playing
semiprofessional games with local teams. He began his studies at the
University of Missouri in Kansas City and attended the Kansas City Art
Institute, an important American art school oriented toward teaching
craft and technical skills. Convinced he was not good enough for major
league sports, he began to concentrate increasingly on the artistic talent
his teachers had spotted when he was a child.4
Morriss decision to stop painting in 1958, the year ARTnews named him
the best young painter in the United States, was not arbitrary; it was typical
of his relentless self-criticism, and of using his own work as a form of art
criticism. This practice is especially evident in the drawings. His dual and
parallel career as both artist and aesthetician began early when he studied
studio art at the same time as philosophy, psychology and art history.
Despite his prodigious output of critical writing, we maintain that the true
vehicle of Morriss thinking is the drawings in which he works through
both aesthetic as well as existential problems. It is in drawing that he
examined contradictions that neither painting nor sculpture could resolve.
In drawing, he was free to speculate because the record of impulse was
direct and unmediated by the inhibition of criticism.
296
Frustrated that even for Pollock in his most radical phase painting was
disengaged from the process of its creation, Morris sought to marry
image with process in works that could not be considered an object.
This search nally led to the masterful series of Blind Time drawings,
which fused process with a record of action in an image spread across
a given surface that because of the explicit two-dimensionality of
drawing cannot be perceived as sculpture or illusionistic painting as a
three-dimensional object in space. To arrive at this solution, however,
he would have to follow a path that took many unexpected and often
contradictory turns, sometimes doubling back on itself before another
point of departure could be identied.
After his two-year stint in the army, traveling back and forth to Japan and
China, he returned to the USA, where he worked as a wrangler, breaking
wild horses on a ranch in Wyoming, until he earned enough money
to return to college. In 1953, he enrolled at Reed College in Portland,
Oregon, known for its experimental liberal education, where he studied
philosophy and psychology, two disciplines that continued to inform his
art, including his drawings, throughout his life. Despite his academic
interests, it was becoming increasingly clear that his destiny was to be a
visual artist. He moved back to San Francisco in 1955, accompanied by
choreographer Simone Forti, a fellow student at Reed, whom he married.
Morriss teachers at the California School of Fine Arts were Bay Area
gurative painters and abstract expressionists whose styles he found
conventional and uninspiring. Jackson Pollock, on the other hand,
seemed a real challenge. However, he quickly came to the conclusion
that not even Pollocks radical method of pouring liquid paint onto an
unstretched fabric on the oor rather than applying it with a brush on
stretched canvas could continue to innovate within the conventions of
painting a conclusion Pollock himself apparently made. Morris admired
Pollocks ability to use paint in a way that changed the very structure of
painting by asserting and stressing the physical properties of materials
as well as emphasizing the process that created the image.6 Having seen
Hans Namuths widely reproduced photographs of Pollock painting
in Life magazine, Morris began to work on the oor as opposed to the
wall on very large canvases he described as gestural and expressionistic,
using a reduced palette of black, white, and gray. In many respects the
work on paper that survives from this period suggests a black and white
version of Pollocks last painting, Scent, painted in 1955 (which was often
reproduced in black and white). FIG. 1.
Like the image of Jackson Pollock caught by the camera in the act of
painting, Czannes Mont Sainte-Victoire also appears in Morriss transfer
drawings of the eighties, often in combination with other obsessive
themes such as the labyrinth and images drawn from Goyas paintings
and prints. Morris has said that the formative experience for his art was
the works he encountered as a child at the Nelson Atkins Museum, where
he spent a great deal of time. In the eighties, Czannes Mont SainteVictoire, the Sung dynasty scroll paintings, and the Goya prints exhibited
in a mezzanine gallery returned to haunt his imagination.
Morriss drawings were very large and done on the oor, like his
paintings. FIG. 2. Taking Pollock as an example, Morris avoided the
gure-ground relationships that characterized painting up through
Cubism by emphasizing a highly articulated surface animated by a
broken, pulsing, and moving eld with no specic focus. His works on
paper of this period presage the process-oriented Blind Time drawings
he began decades later. To paint on such a large scale, he built a moving
platform. This permitted him to move across the huge canvas on the
oor, a situation he described as similar to making a tapestry.7 After he
covered the entire area with a thick pasty pigment he mixed himself, he
applied the thick medium to canvas with various instruments, including
newspapers and his hands. Once he was nished, like Pollock he would
either accept or discard the result of his process.
In the work of Pollock, Czanne, and nally Goya, whose images begin to
haunt his work in the eighties, Morris found mysteries that language could
not express. Indeed it was precisely this inability for words to adequately
convey their respective achievements that fascinated him. The appearance
The evolution of the style and content, the materials and techniques
of Morriss drawings chronicle his realization of what was no longer
available to painting the record of process and the ux of feeling, as
297
Only decades later in his Blind Time drawings could Morris begin to
grapple with the way in which Czanne changed the structure of painting
to open the door to a new kind of space unrelated to Renaissance and
academic illusionism, which called upon a primarily tactile rather than
visual response to establish space. From the very outset of his career
Morris is already focused on the phenomenology of perception. This
interest was intensied by his reading of Maurice Merleau-Pontys
Phenomenology of Perception as soon as it was translated into English
in 1962. The physical grounding of perception itself visually and
conceptually became a lifelong preoccupation for Morris.
Thus Morris found his voice as an artist in the milieu of Cage, Duchamp,
and their younger admirers, Johns and Rauschenberg, rather than in the
context of formalist abstraction toward which he had become hostile.
A new generation of artists viewing Abstract Expressionism as a tired
dead end was drawn to Cages ideas that concerts could be multi-faceted
interdisciplinary events involving movement, sound, and images. Like
Rauschenberg and Johns, Morris would become preoccupied by the
relationship of abstraction to representation and enigmatic objects
frequently related to the human body. Soon after he arrived in New
York he met both and became part of the circle of young artists, dancers,
musicians, and writers inuenced by Duchamp that revolved around
Cage and choreographer Merce Cunningham.
298
The directions for a frugal poem (which could have been called a
minimal poem as well) anticipated performance and multimedia pieces
Morris would later create as well as his practice of layering images in his
later drawings. Morris wrote Cage about another project he had in mind
for an unilluminated manuscript, which actually did materialize. On
a dark gray sheet of paper 18 x 24 Duchamps Litanies of the Chariot
(Slow life. Vicious circle. Onanism etc.) are written and repeated
enough times to ll the page it amounts to a two and one half hour
graphic recitation. The time is recorded at the bottom.16 Signicantly
Morris notes the time needed to execute the work as part of its content.
This is the formula for xing a work to a specic moment in time that
he would use in the Blind Time drawings. In Pollocks poured paintings,
the record of a gesture only implied the passage of time in its sputtering
trajectory. Morris was determined to anchor the work even more literally
in a specic time and space context. Toward this end, many of his early
Duchampesque objects were involved with the measurement of time and
space, such as rulers, clocks, and meters.
In April 1961, Yves Kleins exhibition at the Leo Castelli gallery was the
most talked-about event of the year among younger artists. Klein spent
two months at the Chelsea Hotel; but since he did not speak English and
the Americans did not speak French, it was his works which featured
impressions of the human body on canvas that were discussed. Morris
has said that he was certainly aware of Klein at the time. Klein had
discovered a way of representing the body without depicting it: he made
impressions on canvas by covering nudes with paint and using them as
human paintbrushes. Despite the radicality of Kleins approach to art,
he was not the only artist to use imprints of body parts in his work. In
1951 Rauschenberg made a full-size blueprint of the body of his wife,
artist Sue Weil. Later he outlined his foot in one of the illustrations of
Dantes Inferno that he showed at the Castelli gallery in 1961, while Johns
had incorporated casts of body parts in works beginning with the 1955
targets. Like the other artists of his generation looking for a new point of
departure to replace Abstract Expressionism, Morris was keenly aware of
the artists Leo Castelli exhibited.
The early object sculptures that Morris created between 1961 and 1963,
in many respects in response to Duchamp, addressed the dichotomy
between process and the work it created. Since Morris could not resolve
this duality, he decided to emphasize it. This was typical of the way his
thought developed through an essential phase of negation of a given
principle in order to advance to another stage of thinking and making
that was in turn negated. The objective, it became increasingly clear, was
to strip art of the illusionism that was the crowning achievement of the
Renaissance.
Among the other early drawings Morris made was the Crisis series.
Ostensibly the subject of these drawings was the Cuban missile crisis,
a Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United
States in October 1962. He bought a New York Post tabloid newspaper
every day during the Cuban Missile crisis and painted over one or two
pages with diluted gray acrylic paint, rubbing some of it away to make
the image or text below the paint slightly more visible. Sometimes he
left the photograph visible without painting it out. FIG. A. When the
Cuban missile crisis was over, so were the drawings. The crisis theme was
revisited in 1990, and again in 2003, using headlines and images from the
For example, in one of his earliest pieces, the Box with the Sound of Its
Own Making, Morris made a three-dimensional cube that occupied
space and also referenced process by including the real time in which it
was made with a recording of the sound of its actual construction. Thus
299
Brancusi, the only modern sculptor who captured his interest. FIG. 6.
This early concern with Brancusis streamlined geometric volumes
which he shared with Carl Andre and the way Brancusi repeated
and manipulated similar or identical forms was an inspiration for the
minimal sculptures Morris began to make beginning in 1964. FIG. 7.
At the same time that he was building the silent gray painted plywood
constructions that originated in the sets he had built for Simone Fortis
performances, Morris himself began to perform his own works.
That pictorial illusionism was a problem Morris was grappling with at the
same time that he was thinking about Pollock would explain why he paired
a photograph of Site with a photograph of Pollock painting in a drawing
made in the eighties in the same series in which images of Czannes
Mont Sainte-Victoire also appear. By the time Site was performed, Morris
had become acquainted with the literature of art history and with the
practices of Asian art which he studied with New York School painter Ad
Reinhardt, who taught art history rather than studio art at Hunter College.
Reinhardts inuence on the younger generation of artists who came of age
in the sixties is far greater than yet acknowledged. In any reconsideration
of minimal and conceptual art, the gure of Ad Reinhardt would loom far
larger than it has in current literature. Morris was sometimes at odds with
his Hunter College professors, but he found much to admire in Reinhardt
and the two became friends.
While making the object sculptures rst shown at the Green Gallery in
1963, Morris was taking art history graduate courses at Hunter College
in New York. Under the supervision of William Rubin and E.C. Goossen,
he chose to write his thesis on form classes in the work of Constantin
300
predated the essay by more than a decade. In the 1964 Green Gallery
installation, he demonstrated that the gallery space was in fact a frame or
background for the three-dimensional objects placed in it which related
to its horizontal and vertical structure in the same manner that shapes
were silhouetted in pictorial gure-ground oppositions. This discovery
also exposed the fact that the white cube of the gallery was a sterile
prison whose walls had to be either breached or addressed. By the end
of the decade, Morris would take art outside the art or museum gallery
context into the open spaces of the landscape itself.
In 1964, the same year Site was performed, Morris had a landmark show
at the Green Gallery of minimal volumetric wooden sculptures made
of plywood and painted gray. These were conceived not as individual
pieces but as an installation relating to the four walls, ceiling, and oor of
the gallery space. FIG. 10. The exhibition was the rst explicit statement
that the work of art was dominated by its context. Brian ODoherty
expounded upon this idea when he described the white cube in his
inuential 1976 Artforum essay. However, Morriss understanding of the
white cube of the gallery as a container for the objects placed within it
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The move outside the white cube into nature itself ofcially began in
October 1968 with the group exhibition Earth Works held at the Dwan
Gallery in New York. Both Morris and Smithson showed plans for outdoor
projects. This exhibition attracted much attention and discussion. It was
followed in February 1969 by a show curated by Willoughby Sharp titled
Earth Art held at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York. Once again Smithson and Morris were
among an international group of artists who included Walter De Maria,
Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Neil Jenney, Richard Long,
Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Gnther Uecker.
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a sense of power; they felt they were acting instead of being acted
upon as they were in curated museum exhibitions. Smithson proposed
a move into the landscape in his 1966 landmark article Entropy and
the New Monuments, a critique of the Primary Structures exhibition
of minimal art curated by Kynaston McShine at the Jewish Museum in
New York. That year Smithson was commissioned to do a project for the
DallasFort Worth Regional Airport. He studied the site with elaborate
topographic maps. Smithson used the phantom airport commission (it
was never built) as an opportunity to obtain related commissions for
his friends Carl Andre, Sol LeWitt, and Robert Morris, also looking for
ways to work outside the gallery/museum context. Smithsons project
involved surveys, excavations, clearings, and aerial photography.
During the late sixties, aerial photographs of nuclear weapons being
tested in the desert near the airport as well as of the bombardment of
Vietnam were widely published. These outraged the moral conscience
of the artists, who quickly reacted, creating various anti-War coalitions
in which Morris was particularly active. In this context of moral outrage
the land art projects split in two. One group of artists led by Smithson
and Morris expressed criticism of the culture that commissioned
land art as a cheap way of covering up a tragically destroyed natural
landscape. Another group, including Walter De Maria, Michael Heizer,
and James Turrell built elaborate site-specic installations in isolated
areas that required great effort to access. Yet another, including Richard
Serra, Beverly Pepper, and Richard Long, made outdoor site-specic
environmental works that were not objects but permanent installations.
A symposium was held by the sponsor of the project, the King County
Arts Commission, on Earthworks: Land Reclamation as Sculpture.
Morris was the principal speaker and his lecture was published in the
symposium catalogue. His speech addressed the question What is
public art? He claimed that art monumental sculpture dwarfed by its
architectural context was not public art, but rather the expansive works
transforming large tracts of nature without site constraints were the
proper form of public art. His comments must be understood in the
context of the burgeoning public art programs being commissioned at
the time by cities partially or fully funded by the National Endowment of
Arts or the Government Services Administration. The purpose of these
well-meaning but inadequately funded federal programs was to add
painting and sculpture to architecture, thus creating an arts renaissance
in the United States. Privately funded programs for land reclamation, on
the other hand, had far more cynical objectives, which Morris addressed
in his lecture:
Smithson thought that wrecked and trashed sites could be reclaimed with
art. Morris had no such illusions. Nevertheless he made many drawings
for land art projects which were rarely executed. Carl Andre was equally
if not more dubious. For the Texas airport commission, Andre proposed
a fanciful conceptual project that blatantly confronted the socio-political
and economic context within which these aerial projects were to be seen.
As recorded by Smithson in his 1969 article Aerial Art, Andre called for
A crater formed by a one-ton bomb dropped from 10,000 feet / or / An
acre of bluebonnets (state ower of Texas). Morriss proposal was for
an earth mound invaded by a series of asphalt pavements. Smithson
suggested a large-scale version of his 1968 sculpture Gyrostasis, triangular
pavements whose structure would be legible from an aerial perspective.
Morriss, LeWitts, and Smithsons proposals could have been but were
not realized. Needless to say, Andres was strictly conceptual, a bitter
criticism of US aerial bombings in Vietnam.
The most signicant implication of art as land reclamation is that art can and should be used
to wipe away technological guilt. Do those sites scarred by mining or poisoned by chemicals
now seem less like the entropic liabilities of ravenous and short-sighted industry and more
like long-awaited aesthetic possibilities? Will it be a little easier in the future to rip up the
landscape for one last shovelful of non-renewable energy source if an artist can be found
(cheap, mind you) to transform the devastation into an inspiring and modern work of art?25
Earthwork projects by these artists were for the most part bitterly satiric
and reected the disenchantment of the art community with war in
Vietnam and violence at home, including assassinations, race riots,
and the total destruction of the inner cities that were once thriving
metropolises. Morris shared Smithsons and Andres critical attitudes
toward what was happening in the United States, both domestically and
in its activities abroad. However, he was also genuinely interested in the
idea of works of art extended so far on the horizon that they invoked
totally different sensations from those associated with the perception of
objects within the normal visual eld. Unlike the other artists involved
in earthworks and land art, he had a background in engineering, which
he had studied in college and later while serving in the army corps of
engineers.
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15. Indeed Asian art was a lifelong interest for Morris, who owns a wellthumbed copy of the Tao of Painting as well as a Metropolitan Museum
catalogue of Chinese painting.
The fragility and translucency of the paper Morris used in these drawings
is in stark contrast with, for example, his heavy geometric ink drawings
of the 1978 In the Realm of the Carceral series. In 1990 he continued this
investigation of drawings of body parts in a series of Carcinoma based
on images taken from a book on gross pathology showing cancers of
various organs. The drawings themselves were made by placing mats on
the page and spraying black paint over them. Given his critical stance,
the diseases of the human body could easily be metaphors for the illness
of the body politic.
While large-scale public earthworks took the artist out of the museum
into public spaces, Morriss reaction against them initiated a far more
intimate and personal approach to art. This was precisely what Morris
would explore in the series of Rubbings he executed rst in 1972 and
then later in 1992. As we have seen, Morriss drawings are often linked
to particular works. Other drawings, however, relate to problems of
representation vs. abstraction. In this connection, the series of rubbings
he made of objects and body parts is especially relevant. The rst series
done in 1972 was impressions of objects in his studio; those made in
1992 were even more intimate impressions of parts of his own body.
To create these drawings he used porous berglass or Japanese paper
that does not tear under pressure. Rubbing his hands in graphite, he
pressed the large sheets of paper rst around objects in 1972 and then,
twenty years later, against parts of his body until the graphite impression
bonded with the paper.
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of your feeble smallness in the face of the greater authority and glory
represented by the monumental artifact, he wrote in a critique of forms
that dominate and overwhelm the spectator.30 Seeking an alternative to
such intimidating monuments, he focused on a form that had fascinated
him from the outset of his career as an artist: the profoundly resonating
image of the labyrinth. Beginning with the 1961 Passageway, the
disorienting passageway with no exit that traps the body within its walls
reappears over and over in both actual structures as well as in drawings.
Rejecting dominating monumental sculpture, Morris turned to the
labyrinth, an ancient form that does not dominate but surrounds and
encloses the body. He proposes the origin of the labyrinth as perhaps the
chthonic meanderings of the prehistoric cave. Within the labyrinth one
becomes lost without a guide, or a thread. The labyrinth disables vision,
renders it helpless to aid ones cognitive capacities to map ones place and
seize ones critical responses. The body, too, is in some sense disabled as
it must submit to following or being led through spaces foreclosed to
mental navigation.31 Many of the drawings Morris made as proposals
for earthworks in the late sixties and seventies feature labyrinths. In 1974
he constructed a physical labyrinth for an exhibition at the Institute of
Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Drawings for labyrinths are a thread
that runs through his work as a personal obsession buried deeply in the
subconscious of both the artist himself as well as that of the human race.
An image studied by Jackson Pollock during his Jungian analysis, the
labyrinth has been proposed as the image Pollock created in his poured
paintings that seemed to draw the viewer into their space.
We have seen that Morris approached each new chapter in his career as
an artist by beginning with negation. To nd a new point of departure,
however, he frequently starts with a set of rules to follow. This is true
of the series of labyrinths as well. Explaining his obsession with the
labyrinth he quotes Wittgensteins denition of rule-based behavior:
When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly. In
other words, for Morris the labyrinth lurks as a concrete metaphor
for Wittgensteins condition for submitting to a rule. It is a form of
enclosure, mysterious and sacred, terrifying and claustrophobic, that
haunts him throughout his life and that he evidently has a subconscious
compulsion to repeat.
That the labyrinth had its dark and sinister aspect was hardly unknown
to Morris. He was familiar with Piranesis Carceri, shown in 1978 at
the National Gallery in Washington, as well as with Michel Foucaults
descriptions of labyrinthine prisons in Discipline and Punish. Inspired
by Foucaults account of the conning repetitious corridors of prisons,
hospitals, and asylums, in 1978 Morris made one of his most brilliant
305
Morris had recently visited Pompeii with its references to the fallen
bodies turned to ash as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
another natural catastrophe. In 1982 Mount St. Helens in the United
States experienced a devastating earthquake as well as an ensuing
ood. From images of death by drowning Morris turned to death by
incineration. The watery deluge was replaced as an obsessive theme by
the scorched earth of the restorm, the theme of a series of monumental
mural-size drawings that turned the deadly uncontrollable waves of
the ood into the yet more deadly res of the Nazi crematoria and the
atomic bombings of Japan.
The actual view of the Fattoria di Celle labyrinth, which was constructed
of marble taken from the quarries of nearby Pietrasanta where the
Renaissance sculptors had found their stone, is from a viewing point
above, where the entire triangular structure can be seen. FIG. 16. Once
within the labyrinth, however, the viewer is lost in a maze that has no
other exit than the entrance. In other words, once the ultimate blank
wall is confronted, the only way out is to nd the way back. Obviously
analogies with the Florentine Dantes losing his way must have occurred
to Morris as he designed his Tuscan labyrinth at the entrance to what
was indeed a dark wood within which the Celle sculpture park is
located.
These drawings were done on the same size sheets of paper as the
Deluge drawings, but now they were pieced together as sections of
frieze-like mural drawings attached to the wall itself. Water and mist
became re and ash as the skeletons of bodies were heaped upon each
and swept away in the blistering heat of an apocalyptic conagration.
These drawings were done in an intense period of feverish activity of
six frantic months from the spring to fall of 1982 as Morris worked as
if possessed.
Beginning with his large freehand studies after Leonardo, Morris
embarked on a period that was both gurative and symbolic in works
done in a fury of emotional explosiveness. In both the drawings and the
related reliefs done in Hydrocal (a substance more durable than plaster),
his subject was nuclear apocalypse that gradually morphed into the
scenes of piles of skeletons seen in photographs of the Holocaust. With
their representation of retrospective themes, the works of the eighties
mark the moment when Morris began to plumb his own memories. The
series of drawings titled Psychomachia were mural drawings inspired
by Renaissance battle scenes he had seen in Italy in Roman triumphal
columns and Renaissance paintings glorifying victorious battles. The
recurring forward-striding gure in the Psychomachia was made with
a stencil that is repeated and overlaid so that the result is like that of a
marching brigade.
Drawing the plans for the earthworks had brought him back to a more
traditional type of drawing that sometimes used the cast shadows and
light/dark contrasts rejected by modernisms insistence on atness.
In the spring of 1981 the Metropolitan Museum in New York was
exhibiting fty of Leonardo da Vincis nature drawings from Windsor
Castle. Morris saw the exhibition, which included the unforgettable
iconic drawing of the Deluge by Leonardo, an artist who had always
fascinated him. Haunted by Leonardos tumultuous Deluge, Morris
became increasingly preoccupied with apocalyptic themes that ranged
from deadly ood to ravaging re. He had done a large charcoal
drawing based on Gricaults Raft of the Medusa, whose emphatic
graphite twisted scrawls were related to his interpretation of Leonardo.
Leonardos terrifying prophecies of cataclysmic disaster resonated
with Morriss increasingly somber mood and skepticism regarding the
future of the human race as global violence and ecological catastrophe
increased. He began to be plagued by insomniac images of horror and
annihilation. Of course Leonardo himself was no stranger to war, having
designed weapons for Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan. And he had
also witnessed natural disasters.
306
Of the sudden changes in direction that mark his career, the most
dramatic shift is Morriss reaction against public art and interaction
with powerful impersonal organizations in favor of a highly personal
expressive personal art that represented a turbulent world of inner
dramas. Morriss withdrawal from the New York art scene signaled a
retreat from worldly action into the seclusion of contemplation. If he
could not change the world, then at least he could change his mind.
7 GOYAS GHOSTS
What about memory? I can remember so many different reactions to various works,
some of them varying wildly over the years. I could discuss this phenomenon in terms of
theoretical notions about interpretation: how art permits relatively sustained periods of
puzzlement and deferred responses delays in terms of truth. But I want to open up the
subject of memory as the subjectivity of memory, as the genealogy and/or etiology of certain
feelings [] And here we enter a tangled, murky zone where phantasy and images, desire
and loss, and wit and guilt reside.
Robert Morris, Golden Memories, interview with W.J.T. Mitchell, Artforum, 1994
War has been a consistent theme in Morriss work since the beginning of
his career. One of his early performance pieces, a mock battle between
himself in the costume of a warrior and the painter Robert Huot, was
titled War. As a young man he served in the army in Korea in the early
fties and witnessed acts of barbarism against innocent civilians. His
involvement in the anti-war movement during the American invasion
of Vietnam occupied much of his time in the early seventies. In the early
eighties, as we have noted, his response to the massacres of World War II
was a major theme with which Morris became increasingly preoccupied.
In October 1982, Morris attended the opening of the Zeitgeist exhibition
in Berlin, where eight Firestorm drawings were exhibited in a huge gallery
307
The war had been over nearly forty years by the time the Zeitgeist
exhibition was held, but its memories were preserved in monuments
like the Gedchtniskirche, a bombed-out church left as a memorial ruin
in the midst of the Kurfrstendamm, the main street of Berlin. Hitlers
architect Albert Speer had just died. The Holocaust was being studied
by scholars in Europe in America and new documents were constantly
being found. These texts and photographs, a constant reminder of the
horrors of war, haunted Morris and began to seep into his work, a dark
shadow of historic reality.
308
making and its processes and purposes. Goya became a beacon for him
because he was impressed with how he could do so much with so little
in his drawings and because his range was so great. How can you not be
interested in an artist that you can never get to the bottom of? Some of
the very late drawings look like they were made with spit and soot, and
yet they overow with irony, pathos and sarcasm and even, so it seems
to me, a kind of wry dismissal of him in old age. I think here about those
old men in swings. Puzzling and mysterious.
In his prints, Goya included text along with images to add another
dimension to the visual, often one that was sharply biting and critical.
That Goya combined words with images also helps explain Morriss
fascination with the Spanish painter. Morris uses Goya as a tool to
open the Pandoras Box of his own memories. During the decade of
the nineties he produced a series of small drawings in ink on Mylar, a
resistant plastic surface that causes dilute liquids to spread into clouds
and shadows. These drawings are detailed and poetic as opposed to
powerful and assertive, revealing a different side to Morriss personality.
The original reproductions of Goya prints on which Morris based his
drawings were relatively small. Eventually Morris found a way to blow
up sections of them to wall size, where they lose the detail of the original
image and become basically abstract. The nature of this abstraction,
however, was of a different order because the images were based on
reproductions rather than on depictions of what is seen.
The method of producing drawings in this fashion was, like Johns and
Rauschenbergs paintings, a form of symbiosis, although in Morriss case
the symbiosis was between printmaking and drawing. We identify the
large mural drawings in ink with their tactile surfaces and ambiguous
depth as paintings. In these drawings, Morris is concerned not with
what the image was or how it was created but rather with the event as it
connected to memory. The layering of images relates these works to lm
montage, which creates a similar layering, asking the mind to associate
distinct images into a single imaginative mental construction resonant
with multivalent meaning.
The last drawings Morris did based on Goyas themes, the huge multipart
works based on the Disparates, which appear abstract because the
image is so enlarged, were executed in 2006. The process that produced
309
for making the drawing was stipulated and recorded on the drawing
along with the actual time it took to create it and the margin of error
between the estimated and actual time. Thus the concept of error was
introduced into the actual making of the drawing, calling attention to
the difference between intention and outcome which may be generalized
to all human action.
The sheer quantity of Blind Time drawings is related to the urgency
Morris felt in producing them. In fact, Morris did not make many
minimal sculptures or land art works, nor is there a great corpus of felt
pieces. On the other hand, he drew from the time he was a child and
never stopped making works on paper. In drawing he found a space for
thinking and remembering in ways the three-dimensional works never
did. There are seven series of Blind Time drawings that date from 1973
to 2007. The written texts that accompany the images add another layer
of meaning as well as requiring additional time to view and digest. The
recording of estimated time and actual time and the degree of error
between the two, the intention and the result, are integral to the meaning
of these drawings. According to Morris, Not being able to see the paper
while I draw undermines every idea of intentionality and raises the issue
of the statute of error as a limiting factor. For those who work blindfold,
the notion of talent becomes completely meaningless. The process in
itself does not interest me; it is nothing but a means.39
8 BLIND TIMES
Simultaneously, and from the other side from the bodily side, of the side of the body
inhabiting its living time and space as opposed to that of memory, but nevertheless impelled
and compelled by memorys psychic charge there is also embodied in these works a recalling or renaming of a complex set of mediated relations that could only have issued from
a lifetime of preparation.
Robert Morris, Czannes Mountains, Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, 1998
In the sixteenth century Pieter Bruegel painted The Blind Leading the
Blind. Four hundred years later Morris took up the theme of blindness
as both image and parable. The rst group of ninety-eight Blind Time
drawings was done in 1973. Dipping his ngers and hands into a mixture
of graphite or powdered pigments and sticky plate oil, Morris left traces
of his ngers and hands on the paper. The method for producing the
drawings relates back to the task-based drawings and performances
Morris performed early in his career and contrasts a narrowly described
given method with the surprising and varied results. The estimated time
310
the same issues, which are often philosophical and existential but also
reect an attempt to make art after Pollock that would retrieve certain
qualities of the old masters without, however, relying on their stylistic
conventions. Morris investigated how Czanne began the process that
ended in abstraction in his style of modulated brushstrokes that did
not complete contours but relied on an implicit appeal to touch in their
elaborated and nuanced surfaces. In art historical terms, this distinction
between haptic (that which is addressed to touch) and optic (that which
is addressed to eyesight alone) corresponds to the dominant stylistic
categories established by the great Viennese art historian Alois Riegl.43
The reconciliation of Czanne and Pollock is the key to the ambition of the
Blind Time drawings that unite the desire to create a painterly surface with
the wish to work in an immediate and spontaneous manner that negates
preconception, permitting instead the nervous record of physical accident,
automatic free association and chance procedures that could only be
completely controlled. In these drawings, Morris could nally resolve the
problem of synthesizing Czannes tactile, textured, ambiguous surfaces
with Pollocks spontaneous execution and powerful drama.
The fact that the Blind Time drawings all contrast the images made with
the texts inscribed on the sheet after the image is made is central to
their meaning. The juxtaposition is a continuation of Morriss lifelong
investigation of the relationship of words to images. In these drawings he
poses the problem of what happens when images and text intermingle,
and whether they conict, contaminate or change their respective
meanings. What constitutes differences between the iconic and the textual
was a question he attempted to answer by creating handicaps for imagemaking. The idea of making works with his eyes closed was a tactic that
offered a possibility for investigating the relationships between memory,
image, and spatial perception deprived of its primary sensory function,
that of vision. Locating feeling not in seeing but in touching brought a
more intimate sense of involvement which was the very opposite of the
detached considerations of the engineered construction of minimal art.
One reason Morris hit on the idea of drawing blindfolded was because he
was searching for a way to make art that eliminated both taste and talent
(which Duchamp purported was the aim of his work). Morris had already
decided that Duchamps selections, combinations, and arrangements were
functions of taste and that the productions of the Large Glass and his last
installation, tant Donns, both of which he had seen in the Philadelphia
Museum, did involve talent as well as conception. So he attempted to
go further by eliminating visual perception entirely, thus presumably
annihilating taste and talent. In the end, reconsidering the results of the
Blind Time drawings, he realized that this effort was futile.
The obsession with measurement in the Blind Time drawings relates not
only to Morriss earliest works but to the image that had begun to haunt
him: that of Drers gure of Melancholy pictured in his most famous
engraving. Morris had used the word in a number of complex linear
drawings of the late nineties incorporating the word Melancholia that
included the image of the labyrinth together with Wittgensteins diagram
of the duck/rabbit which perceived one way suggests a duck, while
perceived another looks like a rabbit. One series of Blind Time drawings
is subtitled Melancholia and references Drers iconic engraving of a
seated angel lost in thought. The title Melencolia I appears in the print
itself, suggesting that Drer may have intended to illustrate all of the
Four Temperaments: melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, and sanguine.
During the middle ages the four temperaments were linked with the
Four Elements earth, air, re and water. Morris had already created
images of the elements, but of the temperaments only the melancholic
corresponded to his character and experience.
311
Morris had met the philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky
when both were arrested during a protest against the Vietnam war. He
was impressed with Chomskys writings and in this text he addresses
Chomsky directly:
We humans are, according to Chomsky, somewhere on a scale between rats and angels. A
rat could not solve a maze requiring the application of prime numbers. So why should we
have answers to questions about the self, the mind/body relation, consciousness, a priori
knowledge, etc.? And would we really want to know what the angel knows about these things?
We should be satised with our blindness about such questions. But of course we are not.
Any more than the angel is satised with not having answers to those unimaginable questions
angels ask. The angels is a superior brand of blindness.46
The texts of the Blind Time V (Melancholia) series often relate to loss,
mourning, and remembering friends, like art historian Edward Fry or
architect Alan Buchsbaum or his blacksmith grandfather who he used to
watch shoe horses as a child. The text of one of the drawings describes
the process of making the drawing while actively remembering his
beloved grandfather: Approaching the page from the top, I concentrate
on remembering my blacksmith grandfathers huge, callused, and
misshapen hands. I rub downward trying to expand the imprints of my
own hands to the size I felt his to be when I was seven and sitting beside
him at sundown while he told me a story about snakes and foxes as he
casually dipped his hands into a basket of craysh he had seined that
afternoon. When several craysh had fastened their pincers onto his
rough ngers he drew up his hands and proceeded to crack off their tails,
throwing the heads over the fence to the chickens without a pause in the
story. I make pinching motions at the bottom of the page, and nally, I
rub the edges of the page trying to generate something like the heat we
felt on our backs as we leaned against the sun-warmed house on that hot,
Missouri July evening so long ago.
312
Czanne remains primary among the artists of the past whose ghosts
haunt Morris. Describing how Czanne painted in his old age, Morris
wrote: On another level these works can be read as an aggressive,
destructive gesture, or rather, such a gesture can be read within the
works, arising from Czannes despair and anger at the progress of
development arriving to disrupt and destroy his childhood spaces.49
He appreciated Czannes late paintings because of their lack of nish
and the rejection of resolution and closure of those conicts and
hesitations that were the conditions of their making. In other words, he
loved Czanne not for his certainty and concreteness but for his doubt.
For him Czanne was the exemplary artist because he continues even at
the end of his life to risk and not to fear or eliminate contradictions in
favor of a perfect harmony.
Looking at the view Czanne painted, during his visit to the studio
of the great artist in Aix, Morris recalled: Half a century ago I stood
on a rocky Missouri hillside beneath a heavy canopy of oaks and
persimmons and massive walnuts [] On that day, in that throbbing
heat, the spaces between me and the world had yet to be measured; I
had yet to assess the worlds spaces and those of my body; I had yet to
risk my movement within and against the spaces of the world; I had yet
to measure my margins of mobility against the weight of history. Being
as green as the summer landscape, I was also as empty as the sky of the
darkest shade of evil.50
The most recent series of Blind Time drawings, Grief, contains chilling
texts related to the war in Afghanistan and the torture of prisoners in
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Even before reading the text, one has
a sense that the blackened rivulets that stream down them are really
bloody open wounds. Once Morris begins the Moral Blinds which
end in the horrifying texts of the most recent Grief series, there is no
question that these works are political. However, they do not degenerate
into propaganda or illustration. He is not showing us pictures of war;
he is forcing us to feel how the victims of these killings, maimings, and
tortures feel.
His instructions in one of the Grief drawings are to feel what the
prisoner who is being tortured is actually feeling. Another of the texts
accompanying these images reads: Given: the page, the black, the red,
the gray, the secure blindfold, and the three classes involved in Americas
perpetual foreign wars: (1) the proting overclass, (2) the underclass who
absorb the wounds, and (3) the dead. Let the sky box above represent the
safe, untouchable zone of the overclass for whom war is patriotism, glory
and prot. Let the zone immediately below the sky box be reserved for
the maimed underclass who have fought, and let the lower ground box,
the inverse of the upper one, be regarded as a kind of collective zone of
forgotten war dead.
Since these wars did not really affect the population as a whole, there
were no outraged manifestations. But Morris was so shaken by the
carnage and injustice that he made drawings that expressed his moral
outrage in the Moral Blinds and Grief, the last two series of Blind Time
drawings. The texts of these drawings were blistering criticisms of war
and violence. On one he wrote Working blindfolded with burnt sienna
touches are made in the upper area while thinking of the uncounted
civilian deaths resulting from the conict. Then with mars black the
hands attempt to count off some 3000 touches in the estimated marked
off areas while thinking of the US military deaths. Before reaching this
number I lose count and the mars black is depleted.
313
halfway across and down. Then I switch to ink on the right hand and water on the left and
proceed as before, but this time I work from the right edge inward. After my groping attempts
the safe limits of their zone and then, with blackened hands, pass a onehundred dollar bill back and forth within the estimated safe zone, the one
hand pulling the bill from the other. Then working in the estimated mid
area with burnt sienna, the rst three ngers of the left hand and those of
the right rotate together from right to left across the page. Finally in the
lowest area, closed sts hammer across the page with mars black, each
blow on top of the previous one with the intention of obliterating any
possibility of a later total count.
to simultaneously map and obliterate convoluted marks I try to draw the blind over the page.
The blind in this case is a pun on the word for window shade and
pulling it down is a metaphor for the futile attempt to conceal the
horrors behind it. Studying Goyas preoccupation with desengao, or
disillusionment, which like blinds also has a double meaning, Morris
has found his own image for ripping the veil of illusion from the
nightmare of reality. Wishing to engage with nothing less than the veiled
texture of memory and the depth and intensity of those feelings attached
to memory, he superimposes layers of markings that reverberate visually
in unresolved vibrations. That these memories are also obliterated and
lost like the markings he rubs or brushes away is part of the metaphor of
existence and loss.
So many of the drawings contain leaping ery marks that evoke images
of conagrations and bubbling cauldrons, we assume the image of
death by re must have special meaning for Morris. The fact that the
Blind Time drawings all involve memory in one way or another leads
to the conclusion that Morris is seeking to nd the forgotten, buried,
unconscious memory. And indeed there is such a memory, an event he
knows of but cannot remember, which is the moment when as an infant
he pulled a pot of boiling tomatoes from the stove down onto himself
and almost burned to death. Perhaps the months he spent isolated in
an oxygen tent while his skin healed and formed scars explain the wish
to escape enclosure as well as to create passageways that constrain the
body and induce anxiety. The idea that there are unconscious memories
that may be recovered animates many of the drawings, especially those
connected with direct contact with the body. Thus the fear of recovering
lost memories is dispelled by invoking them.
He judges the drawings after the fact with eyes wide open and discards
at least half. Blindness was part of the process, but aesthetic judgment
which Morris had abhorred and written against is ultimately
decisive. The knowledge of the world that the blind have is only partial.
By creating in that space which is void of vision, Morris feels free to
confront that which he cannot bear to think or to remember in the light
of day. Each drawing creates its own space by shutting out everything
else. This sensory deprivation allows Morris to be in his drawings as
Pollock was in his paintings, and not outside of them distanced from the
actuality of their making. In a total degree of simultaneous physical and
mental immersion there is no distance between artist and art, no critic to
accept or reject the result except after the fact. Like Goyas deafness that
separated him from courtly life, Morriss assumed blindness separates
him from the world outside his work and allows him that freedom from
constraint and limits he desperately sought. He has come to terms with
loss and himself. And he has found a way to make works of art that
retrieve aspects of the art of the past, which in itself constitutes a form of
loss, that he continues to value.
Working blindfolded with ink on my hands and estimating the lapsed time I press rst in the
upper corners and work downward along the vertical edges. Then beginning at the bottom
corners I work upward. Then I work horizontally along the estimated upper edge and nally
along the lower edge. The intention here is to touch and rub out a perimeter rectangle. I
then rub toward the center with the intention of lling the interior of the rectangle. Then I
draw the blind. I think of the nation numbed with fatuous, endless entertainment, saturated
and distracted with media idiocy, hypnotized with useless information. An environment of
political control in which fantasy parades as reality and puerile phalanxes clamor and claw
in the great market of cyberspace, buying and selling the meaningless.
Labyrinthe II, interview with Robert Morris by Anne Bertrand. Published inRobert
Morris. From Mnemosyne to Clio: The Mirror to Labyrinth (199819992000). Skira Muse
dArt Contemporain, Lyon 2000, p. 164.2 Bernice Rose: Drawing Now, exhibition catalogue.
Museum of Modern Art, New York 1976.
3
Interview with Robert Morris by Paul Cumming, 10 March 1968. Archives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution.
Working blindfolded with ink on the left hand and water right I begin at the upper left to
make convoluted marks with the inked left and then try to superimpose identical watermarks
with the right. There is the attempt here to rst mark and then obliterate. I work an estimated
314
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Robert Morris: Czannes Mountains. Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, no. 3 (Spring), 1998.
SIGHT LINES
10
Branden Joseph: Robert Morris and John Cage: Reconstructing a Dialogue. October, vol.
81 (Summer), 1997, pp. 5969.
11
Jeffrey Weiss
Robert Morris: Letters to John Cage. October, vol. 81 (Summer), 1997, pp. 7079.
12
Youngs wife, Marian Zazeela, created projections for the concerts held in their loft called
the Dream House, a center for the group of avant-garde artists involved with Fluxus.
13
14
Rosalind Krauss: The Mind/Body Problem: Robert Morris in Series. Published in Robert
Morris. The Mind/Body Problem. The Guggenheim Museum, New York 1994.
15
16
Ibid.
17
18
In September 1962, after unsuccessful operations by the US to overthrow the Cuban regime
at the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban and Soviet governments secretly began to build bases in Cuba
for a number of intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles with the ability to strike most of
the continental United States.
19
20
Maurice Berger: Labyrinths: Robert Morris, Minimalism, and the 1960s. Harper & Row, New
York 1989.
21
Ibid.
22
Robert Morris: Blank Form, 1960, reprinted in Barbara Haskell: Blam!: The Explosion
of Pop, Minimalism, and Performance 19581964. Whitney Museum of American Art, W.W.
Norton, New York 1984, p. 101.
23
24
Ibid.
25
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid.
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Robert Morris: Size Matters. Critical Inquiry, vol. 26, no. 3 (Spring), 2000.
31
Robert Morris: The Labyrinth and the Urinal. Critical Inquiry, vol. 36, no. 1, 2000.
32
Ibid.
33
Robert Morris: A Method for Sorting Cows. Art and Literature, 11, Winter, 1967.
34
Edward F. Fry: Robert Morris in the Eighties, catalogue. Newport Harbor Museum, Newport
Beach 1986.
35
Ibid.
36
37
38
Ibid.
39
40
41
42
Robert Morris: Words and Images in Modernism and Postmodernism. Critical Inquiry,
vol. 15, no. 2 (Winter), 1989.
43
Alois Riegl: Die Sptrmische Kunstindustrie nach den Funden in sterreich-Ungarn. K. K.
Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Vienna 1901.
44
45
Robert Morris: Have I Reasons, ed. Nena Tsouti-Schillinger. Duke University Press, Durham
2008.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
Ibid.
49
50
51
Ibid.
52
53
54
Interview with Rosalind Krauss, Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem. Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, New York 1994.
55
315
driving, shifted his gaze from the road to the map, a tangled network of
horizon lines on paper called roads.11
Morris, with his interest in the material nature of the lines at Nazca,
identies pebbles and sand as a kind of drawing medium, albeit one
that is inspected with granular scrutiny: The lines had been made by
removing the stones along a straight axis and placing these along the
desired width of the line as a kind of irregular curbing. The ground itself
appeared to have been excavated slightly. That is, the lines were not just
drawn by clearing a path through the stones, but were actual depressions
or shallow incisions in the surface of the earth. The surface is a medium
inscribed with lines, although the lines are also partly dened by the
ridges of subtracted matter. It is something of a miracle that the lines
have survived, yet various factors of climate and composition have indeed
left the ground relatively undisturbed for centuries. Morris continues:
I have described the two different colors of the top and under-layer
of desert earth. Yet the lines do not contrast greatly in color from their
surroundings. It is more the absence of stones on the pathways and the
slight alignment of stones along the edges that give, at close range, the
suggestion of regularity. His move from the material to the spatial the
observation about the visibility of the lines in relation to looking down
versus out is direct. As we have already read, it is only by positioning
oneself within a line so that it stretches away to the horizon that [the
lines] have any clarity. But that remark is preceded by the observation
that, standing within a line and looking down at ones feet, the line
hardly reads. There are seldom enough stones at the edge to mark a
distinct curb or dening edge, and the cleared area is never at and free
of stones. At close range, the lines simply do not reveal themselves.15
Space at Nazca is dened by projected lines that are, again, both material
and, with respect to their mapping function, abstract.
For Smithson, Serra, and Morris a reciprocity of material and spatial
concerns conditions practices of artmaking that mean to avoid image
316
opposition: constricted seeing versus what the artist has recently referred
to (with respect to his experience at Nazca) as seeing at a distance.21
(even an abstract image). The work, instead, occupies the actual world;
it is itself a habitable place. Each artists account is doubly informed by
seeing and bodily sensation as combined means of spatial orientation,
and each deploys line as a physical and/or perceptual extension through
space. Yet each extrapolation of line road, map, incision, elevation,
horizon sustains a relationship to drawing (in the conventional sense)
as a function of medium and support. In Morriss case, the work is
not produced so much as encountered; but it is this factor drawing
as encounter that allows his observations at Nazca to reect on the
broader role of drawing (of marks on paper) in his work.
The lines of Nazca were created for as yet unknown reasons by a culture
unacquainted with the enclosing visual grid of urban space. Morris
explains that, while the grid has been a strict organizing principle in
recent art, new work seeks instead to share the Nazcan apprehension of
space as a palpable emptiness. This is a reference to an historical shift:
For nearly a decade work succeeding minimalism has been built around
one form or another of rationalistic information as content, what
Morris calls a basically analytic strategy for artmaking. Minimalism
had already been informed by simple systems, but subsequent object
art increasingly came to express underlined structures of information
bound together. Newer work in the form of environments and
installations seeks to replace the space of rationalized information
systems with the space of the self. Morris identies two extremes.
The rst is a cool type, in which rooms and spaces are sometimes
articulated by sound or light. The second kind of work, environmental
by morphology, but much more focused on psychological phenomena,
includes small enclosures and other structures sometimes sited outdoors
(though these, we are told, bear no relation to monumental-Minimal
desert Earthworks). What the two categories share is an interest in
spaces where the physical or psychological self are marked out.22
The trip to Nazca followed Morriss own excursion into Land art, which
began during the early sixties16, with a drawing for an outdoor project,
and culminated with Observatory, a large project conceived in 1971 for
an international sculpture exhibition in the Netherlands and completed
six years later. Morriss earthworks obviously draw from the archeology
of the pre-historic site. This has been linked to his interest in the work of
Michel Foucault, among others, with respect to the nature of historical
time: the ruin as allegory, according to which conditions of the present
are read through the ruination of the historical past.17 Aligned with
Nazca can, then, be characterized as an archeological (or archeologizing)
exercise, one through which, as Maurice Berger explains, Morris brought
speculation concerning a vast public art form back to a reconsideration
of individual experience to the psychological space of the self.18 To this
we can add that, as early as 1968, Morris anticipated his encounter with
Nazca through personal history, in a childhood recollection: I often
went to Kansas, he told Paul Cummings, in an interview for the Archives
of American Art. My father was in the livestock business and he would
take trips out to Kansas a lot. And I would go with him sometimes.
And that kind of scale and stretch of landscape was, I think, a pretty
important image. Its extremely at. Some places it just is absolutely at
in every direction. You can see for miles and miles.19 He could easily be
speaking of the Peruvian plain.
Orders and logics are basically operations. As such they exist in time,
not space. Morris describes information-based, or epistemological,
work as notational in that it is at or surface-bound. Information
systems do not require a material expression, and when they do take
material form, it is almost insubstantial: objects employed in such work
are reduced and function as slightly thickened symbols. The Minimalist
object is said to function this way, in that most Minimal art was an art of
at surfaces in space. At best an object can be permuted in its positions
or parts, and as such it can be rotated on its own dense axis. Such
objects are derived from plans generated by drawings on at pages.
This claim effectively brackets the terms of encounter in actual space that
had been ascribed to Minimalist sculpture in the early criticism,23 and
applies those terms instead to a new kind of work, which ventures into
the irrationality of actual space, limiting it by enclosures, not systematic
marker-notations. 24
Halfway through the essay Morris turns a move that is both geographical
and historical to modern Western art, characterized as having long
been informed by a type of Cartesian projection that will net every
visual experience by a vertical plane interposed between the viewer and
the world. The gure of the intersecting plane is derived from standard
descriptions of Renaissance linear perspective: in the application of
perspective as a system of spatial representation, the support (a panel,
for example) can be likened to a pane of glass, a window that we see
through. But Morris summons the vertical plane in order to account
for the condition the closeness, or closedness of urban space: the
conning rectilinear room, where space is either an illusion or limited
to a few feet, and where the details of the work are never out of focus.
Here, the Cartesian grid of rectilinear room space involves a mental
as well as a perceptual focus that implies simultaneous presentness of
parts.20 Not just representation, then, but actual space itself is said to
be governed by the strict authority of the grid; the mapping procedures
of one-point perspective and the actuality of lived experience are both
a function of conceptual or abstract means. Morris constructs a binary
317
Interpretation of the Blind Time drawings has been governed by the terms
of phenomenology, with specic reference to language drawn from The
Phenomenology of Perception by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Accordingly,
318
in the drawings, depth is understood as arising subjectively from a preobjective experience: the most primitive sense that each of us has of our
own bodys density, and with it the fact that this body has a front that is
available to our vision and a back irremediably hidden from it. It is this
pre-objective experience of depth that allows the perceiving subject thus
to gear into the world, which for Merleau-Ponty meant to reach out
toward objects with the expectation that they too would yield congured
meaning, but also to be always and forever tied to a perspective, a place
within a system of interlocking horizons. More, the drawings are said to
work from what Merleau-Ponty calls a condition of spatiality without
things: made through touch only, a drawing is identied as projection
of this pre-objective, carnal density, a meshing of the bodys inner
horizon with the horizon of the external page.32
Phenomenology framed Morriss ambitions for the Blind Time project.
Yet, while necessary, its precepts do not address drawing as a broader
practice for the artist and the role of Blind Time in that regard. Here
Aligned with Nazca is useful. The essay, as we have seen, distinguishes
between two kinds of work the notational (information) and the
experientially spatial. Both of these categories were engaged by Morris;
in light of Nazca, it could be said that the Blind Time drawings, in and
of themselves, not only hold both but characterize the two types as a
function of drawing per se.
319
1
Robert Morris, Aligned with Nazca, Artforum (October 1975); reprinted in Morris,
Continuous Project Altered Daily: The Writings of Robert Morris (Cambridge, Mass. And
London, England, 1993):143-73.
2
Robert Smithson, Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan, Artforum (September 1969);
reprinted in Jack Flam ed., Robert Smithson: The Collected Writings (Berkeley, 1996): 119-33.
Ibid., 125.
Richard Serra, Shift, Arts Magazine (April 1973); reprinted in Richard Serra: Writings,
Interviews (Chicago and London, 1994): 11.
Ibid., 13.
10
11
12
Ibid.,125, 129.
13
Ibid., 120.
14
15
16
The rst Land art project was an unrealized design commissioned by Smithson for a work
to be sited at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.
320
17
For an extensive analysis of this kind, see Maurice Berger, Labyrinths: Robert Morris,
MInimalim, and the 1960s (New York, 1989): chapt 5, Labyrinths: A Search for the Self. See
also Edward Fry, Robert Morris: The Dialectic, Arts Magazine (September 1974): 22-24.
18
DRAWINGS: AN APPRECIATION
Thomas Krens
19
Morris, interview with Paul Cummings, 1968, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution.
20
21
22
23
Above all, Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood, Artfroum (June 1967), reprinted in
Gregory Battcock ed., Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (Berkeley 1995): 116-47.
24
25
26
Ibid., 170-71.
27
31
For extended discussions of the Blind Time drawings, see especially: Paice, Blind Time
Drawings, 1973, in Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, 244; Kenneth Surin, Morris
Drawing Blindfolded, in Robert Morris: Blind Time Drawings (exh. cat. Haim Chanin Fine
Arts, New York, 2003): 10-17; and Jean-Pierre Criqui Drawing from the Heart of Darkness:
Robert Morriss Blind Time, in Robert Morris: Blind Time Drawings,1973-2000 (exh. cat.
Centro per lArte contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, 2005): 11-26.
32
33
Morris, Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making: The Search for the Motivated,
Artforum (April 1970): 62-66; reprinted in Morris, Continuous Project Altered Daily, 71-93.
34
Kimberly Paice, Column, 1961, in Robert Morris: The Mind/BodyProblem, 90. The plan to
topple Column from inside was abandoned after Morris injured himself in rehearsal
35
See Morriss description of the cabinets in a letter to John Cage, reprinted in Brandon
Joseph, Robert Morris and john Cage: Reconstructing a Dialogue, October (Summer 1997):
66.
36
From Morris, Notes on Sculpture, Part 4 Beyond Objects, Artforum (April 1969),
reprinted in Morris, Continuous Project Altered Daily, 68.
37
38
39
40
41
42
For the two series see Kimberly Paice, Labyrinths, 1973-74 and In the Realm of the
Carceral, 1978, in Robert Morris: The mind/Body Problem, 250, 262.
43
44
Ibid., 173.
45
46
47
Many passages from The Unnameable (1958), for example, concern seeing and darkness:
[] with closed eyes I see the same as with them open, namely, wait, Ill say it, Ill try and
say it, Im curious to know what it can possibly be that I see, with closed eyes, with open
eyes, nothing, I see nothing, well that is a disappointment, I was hoping for something better
than that, is that what it is to be unable to lose yourself, Im asking myself a question, is that
what it is, to see nothing, no mater where I look [] Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable (New
York, 1997): 449.
321
he had kept, he guessed, some three hundred or so that had never been
exhibited, published or released through his gallery. But it was not until
two years later, in the spring of 1979, that I managed to visit his home in
upstate New York to see the material. To say that I was only surprised is to
understate my response. Initially, I was struck by the sheer amount and
variety of the work. There were over 400 drawings in Morriss keeping.
The work ranged from precise pen-and-ink axonometric diagrams to
broad pencil and crayon sketches, from painted gestural abstractions of
the 50s to graphite-and-oil body impressions of the 70s, from charcoal
rubbings to pen-and-ink washes, from impressionist renderings to
systematized markings, from annotated typescripts to photo-collages.
Measured against what I knew of Morriss drawings in public and private
collections, the effect of this discovery in Gardiner, New York, was to
suggest that the totality of his graphic work was an independent, but
parallel work of substantial stature. My rst impression was how perfectly
well it all t together. The pre-minimal, pre-performance Robert Morris
was shown through the drawings to have been an Abstract Expressionist,
and his particular brand of emotionless, calculating, stripped-down
Abstract Expressionism could be seen as the precursor to the intellectual
minimalism of the 1960s. Histories were suggested, continuities claimed.
The idea for an exhibition seemed self-evident.
As I discussed the drawings with Morris during the following months
and began, with the asstanse of Catherine Evans and Rebecca Folkman,
the arduous process of assembling a comprehensive catalogue of all
of his drawings and sculpture, I began to see the drawings in their
chronological scope. They functioned as a connective agent, lling in the
spaces between certain, more familiar moments in Morriss sculptural
time. They modied the conceptual disruptions that had appeared, in the
opinion of more than a few commentators on art, to be a precondition
of Morriss work up to 1977, joining the various threads of Morriss
thought that had been thus far revealed in his writing and sculpture, into
a tighter, more integrated tapestry, making a more complete network of
the points in time and sculptural space that had the art-making entity
known as Robert Morris as its center.
By the end of the 1970s Morris had developed and sustained a vigorous
if ambivalent relationship with the art public and critical press. On the
one hand, he was seen as a dominant intellectual persona, the theoretical
artist of self and historical consciousness: an artist of immense
inuence and the presence at the top of the heap according to the
critical eye of Carter Ratcliff; one of our most valuable and provocative
human beings, in the words of John Russell. On the other hand, his
work remained enigmatic, problematic and generally not well-known.
His intellectual intensity and peripatetic style disturbed an art world
that demanded constant change and visual refreshment, but nevertheless
prized the stability of a reliable marketable commodity. Surprisingly few
critics demonstrated any serious propensity to take on the work of such a
formidable and mobile target as Morrisonly adding to the mythology
that surrounded his work.
It was from this vantage point that the exhibition of Robert Morriss
drawings was conceived and selected. Although the intention was not to
resolve any paradoxes or contradictions that have come to inhabit Morriss
work, or establish any summary conclusion regarding his artistic stature,
the exhibition is not merely an interesting pendant to the sculptural
oeuvre, a two-dimensional collection of clues to the conceptual identity
of the larger work. It is predicated on two fundamental assumptions.
The rst is that Robert Morris has occupied center stage in an important
cultural eld at the end of an historical epoch. Within the last thirty years,
in the opinion of some, art entered a period of profound, and perhaps
even nal, crisis. In 1982 there seems to be little question that the history
Except for minor alterations, the above text is the same as the original
version which appeared in English as an introduction to the catalogue of
the exhibition The drawings of Robert Morris, organised by Thomas Krens
and Williams College Museum of Art, which was published in 1982.
322
In order to approach these drawings made without the help of the eyes,
we need rst of all to establish their context in Morriss work, and to
emphasize the extent to which this has appeared to grow out of a
reduction of the optical function (as an essential element of the creative
act, but also, for the beholder, as an aspect of contemplation and of
the related pleasure), out of a kind of devaluation of what Duchamp
stigmatized as the retinal - associated, as in the case of Duchamp, with
the abandonment of painting. For, like the great majority of artists of his
generation, Morris (born 1931) began his artistic career as a painter, even
if the dominant blacks, whites and grays of the works shown in his rst
two solo exhibitions at the Dilexi Gallery in San Francisco (where he was
then living) in 1957 and 1959 did signal a tendency towards the absence
of color that would characterize the work that followed. The history of
art in the second half of the 20th century coincides to a large extent with
a felt need to step aside from painting, which had so long been the preeminent medium, and to shrug it off as if it were a burden or unwanted
heritage, even if this meant continuing its work by other means or
returning to it via some experimental process. For Morris, whose
involvement in the projects of his wife, the choreographer and dancer
Simone Forti, during the second half of the 1950s, gave him rst-hand
experience of a real-time art form, there was an insurmountable (and
frustrating) gap between the painting as nished object and the actual
process of making it: I quit painting for a particular reason - certain
problems I couldnt solve. There was a kind of ontological carcter to
painting I couldnt accept. Because on the one hand you were involved
in some activity, on the other hand you ended up with an object. That
was something that became more and more disturbing to me on an
intellectual level. I couldnt deal with that and unlike Pollock... he was
the only one who managed to put those two things together.1
Cezanne - if Vollard is to be believed - said of Monet that he was
only an eye, but what an eye! The idea of pure visibility, backed up
by an essentialist discourse that runs from Fiedler and Hildebrand up
to Greenberg and his disciples, taking in gures as diverse as Wlfin
323
324
graduated ruler coated with a mixture of vaseline and graphite. But one
manifestation of the profound alterity involved in this encounter with A.
A. (and Morris has indeed said that he wanted to go in this direction of
alterity by working with a person who had been blind from birth, and
on top of that was a woman) took the form of resistance. And then there
was the anxiety induced by the experience, as evinced by these words
relating to the drawing of 30 December 1976, which reect a degree of
unease: Uh, my conviction is that I have an attention span of about
seven minutes... That may in fact not be true. People are always telling
me that I work too hard. Im always doing a hundred different things,
but I think I do that hundred things, one because I really like the things,
and two because Im afraid of doing, because I couldnt do them with
the discipline and intensity and the depth and wouldnt get anything out
of them. So the best way to avoid discovering that I really cant is not to
try. Either way, the most striking thing about A. A.s drawings, some of
which combine red chalk with graphite, is how different they are from
Morriss: by their often violently uncoordinated appearance, by the kind
of radical energy emanating from their impossible gurality. Indeed, the
whole group inevitably brings to mind the philosophical speculation on
blindness that marked the aptly named Enlightenment. From Locke and
his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) to Valentin Hay and
his Essai sur Ieducation des aveugles (1786), via Diderots famous Lettre
sur les aveugles a Iusage de ceux qui voient (1746), the born-blind were the
object of much attention from philosophers and educationalists, thanks
to the new surgical experiments that tended to back up the facts of the
problem, as expounded to Locke in 1693 by the Irish mathematician
William Molyneux, who was meditating on the nature of the transition
from tactile to visual perception in a born-blind person now able to
see as the result of a cataract operation. Crucially, in light of Morriss
concerns as a sculptor, and in that of the fundamental engagement of
the Blind Time Drawings with the question of the relations between sight
and touch, this collaboration with A. A. thus linked up to an important
chapter in the theory of modern art.11
Dating from 1976, the Blind Time II series diverges markedly from the
path opened up by the previous group and constitutes a limit experience
about which Morris still has mixed feelings now. For this sub-ensemble, he
recruited a woman who had been blind from birth through the intermediary
of the American Association of the Blind. She made the drawings under
his direction. The sessions of work with this woman, known only by her
initials (A. A.) were recorded on tape. Morriss idea was to transcribe the
words spoken by A. A. during these sessions and letter them himself on the
corresponding drawings. It would seem that the collaboration was a pretty
stormy affair, as we can judge from an interview given by Morris at the
time: It started where I left off, rather task-oriented kinds of things. But
due to her particular interest it became rather psychological. She ended
up doing portraits of people, or what certain experiences of hers were like,
but not in terms of representationalism. I tried to explain perspective to
her, how its a convention of perspective that people are smaller on the
page when they are further away. She said that was the most ridiculous
thing shed ever heard. So she developed something like area and pressure,
and some of the things that I had worked on, but these became analogs in
some way for her feelings about the things. This is what she was interested
in, so this is the direction that the drawings took, which was very different
from what I did.9
The subsequent development of this collaboration only complicated the
situation still further, since A. A., who had asked to be informed of the
transcription of her words, then refused to give the text back to the artist.
Hence the entropic haste described by Morris: I had not made a copy
of the ms. I had however typed out maybe a dozen excerpts of my choice
for an exhibition at Castelli where I showed maybe 10 or 12 drawings
fairly soon after the series was completed. I had provisionally framed
these excerpts separately (I was still hoping A. A. would come around
and we could later make a denitive choice and I would letter the chosen
excerpts on the drawings). Time went by and she continued to refuse
to return the ms. or approve any excerpt being used. I then decided to
put all of these drawings into archival limbo. [...] Then when the idea
of showing all of the BTD series together came up I scrambled to put
back some texts with drawings - as separately framed little typescripts.
Of course in the time that had passed I had forgotten which text went
with which drawing, so I just began arbitrarily matching what I had on
hand, pulling out of my le a typed page I had saved and putting it next
to a drawing. Somehow I could not let go of the idea that some of the
language that transpired between A. A. and myself had to accompany the
images, no matter how fragmentary... As if these signiers continued to
oat above the drawings and could be pulled down from the air as it were
to re-visit these concrete objects - echoes of those conversations the two
of us had so long ago when these works were being produced. By now
these drawings have been numbered and re-numbered so many times
that any original sequence is unrecoverable. [...] A few years ago A. A.s
lawyer called me and said that A. A. was now willing to return the ms. I
said that it was too late and I didnt want it now.10
It is possible that Morris had the idea of proceeding in the manner of
a choreographer or theatre director and using another person in the
position of an actor in 1974, when he executed a large mural drawing
for an exhibition at the Princeton University museum. For this work,
Light-Codex-Artifacts I (Aquarius), Morris, having mapped out the
constellation of Aquarius (his own star sign) with thumbtacks, followed
the instructions of an assistant to join up each of the points using a
Almost ten years passed before Morris, now getting directly involved
in the theatre of blindness, returned to the Blind Time series. In 1985,
then, he made the third sub-set. Although they once again resulted
from a task determined in advance, in comparison with the rst group
from 1973 these works evinced a less exclusively phenomenological
orientation. In addition to the description of the planned operations,
the text written on the sheet gives other kinds of notations, most
of them relating to the artists readings of scientic literature. For
example: Working blindfolded for an estimated 4 minutes the ngers
attempt to rub out a grid on the left, then progress toward the right,
distance being proportional to amount of hand contact with the page
and pressure inversely proportional to distance traveled. Later erasing
is done. From models based on discreteness, causality, and harmony
to those of indeterminacy, probabilities, violence, discontinuities and
entropy, Feynman diagram of pair annihilation erased from memory.
Time estimation error: -11 sec. As can be seen, the prescribed actions
have a new sophistication to them, and require that a number of distinct
parameters be taken into account. Exceptionally in a corpus where the
hand is the only tool, an eraser is used in order to conclude the action.
The drawing, whose appearance alone is not enough for us to reconstruct
the process of its making - and in the Blind Time I series it often is suggests a kind of chaos, or disorganisation or collapse, and seems quite
literally to be without head or tail. The Feynman alluded to in the text
is the physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) who won the Nobel Prize
in 1965 for his work on quantum electrodynamics. Morris had become
acquainted with him not long before. Characteristically, when asked
325
326
327
8
This drawing, kept at the Louvre, is a study for the gure of Error in Time Discovering
the Truth, painted around 1702. It is discussed by Jacques Derrida in Memories of the Blind
- The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins (Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press, 1993),
which is a recommended read for its intertwining themes of drawing and blindness. As to
the rhetoric of blindness at work in philosophy and literary criticism, and particularly in
Derrida, I refer readers to the book by Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight (second edition,
revised, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1983, notably p. 102-141), whose title
would make an admirable summary for the undertaking of the Blind Time Drawings. On the
heuristic dimension of error in Enlightenment thought (for, as de Man writes, interpretation
is nothing but the possibility of error), and more generally for thoughts on a possible
history of error, see David W. Bates, Enlightenment Aberrations. Error and Revolution in
France, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002 (Coypels drawing appears on the
cover). My thanks to Eric Vigne for acquainting me with this book.
9
Jonathan Fineberg, Robert Morris Looking Back: An Interview, Arts Magazine, September
1980, p. 114-115. The interview was recorded in 1977.
10
On this, see the ne book by Jacqueline Lichtenstein, La tache aveugle. Essais sur les relations
de la peinture et de la sculpture a /age moderne, Paris: Gallimard, 2003. Molyneuxs problem
is about the possibility, or not, of a person recognizing a sphere or cube of equivalent volumes
by purely visual means having identied them beforehand only by touch. The argument that
this would indeed be possible usually refers to the Aristotelian idea of common sensibles,
in other words, qualities of objects that can be perceived by several senses. For example,
movement, size and number can be perceived both by sight and by touch, and belong to this
order; colour and sound cannot: they are proper sensibles. Debate continues on this subject:
see the book of essays edited by Joelle Proust, Perception et intermodalite. Approches actuelles
de la question de Molyneux, Paris: PUF, 1997.
For their visual variety, achieved moreover with the greatest economy of
means, and for the richness of the questions they raise, the Blind Time
Drawings constitute a kind of monument - a fragmentary, scattered
and unprecedented one in the eld of recent art. They also offer a
unique point of access to the thought of their maker, whose work, like
the many mazes he has conceived, has developed in curves, zigzags and
other paradoxical propositions. On the subject of lines, too, we may
remember that in 1960 La Monte Young dedicated his Composition n
10 To Bob Morris. This is a work that consists of just these few words:
Draw a straight line and follow it. And that, of course, both literally and
guratively, is exactly what the dedicatee has taken great care not to do.
12
When, for example, the world of clear and articulate objects is abolished, our perceptual
being, cut off from its world, evolves a spatiality without things. This is what happens in the
night. Night is not an object before me; it enwraps me and inltrates through all my senses,
stiing my recollections and almost destroying my personal identity. I am no longer with
drawn into my perceptual look-out from which I watch the outlines of objects moving by at
a distance. Night has no outlines; it is itself in contact with me and its unity is the mystical
unity of the mana. (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, London/New
York: Routledge, 1996, p. 283.).
14
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (trans. A. A. Brill, Modern Library, 1995), p.
274: The attitude of dreams to the category of antithesis and contradiction is very striking.
This category is simply ignored; the word No does not seem to exist for a dream. Dreams
are particularly fond of reducing antitheses to uniformity, or representing them as one and
the same thing. Dreams likewise take the liberty of representing any element whatever by
its desired opposite, so that it is at rst impossible to tell, in respect of any element which is
capable of having an opposite, whether it is contained in the dreamthoughts in the negative
or the positive sense.
15
Ibid. Max Milner has written a whole book about the paradoxes of the prohibited gaze in
literature: On est prie de fermer les yeux (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).
16
Works of art remain aoat on a sea of words: these are the opening words of Some
Splashes in the Ebb Tide (1973), one of the texts in which Morris discusses the reciprocal
involvement of art and words (reprinted in Continuous Project Altered Daily, op. cit., p. 119141). I have looked at the status of text in Morriss work in On Robert Morris and the Issue
of Writing: A Note Full of Holes, Robert Morris: The Mind I Body Problem, op. cit., p. 80-87.
1
Words spoken to Thomas Krens in 1978 and reproduced in his text, The Triumph of
Entropy, for the catalogue to the exhibition organised by Rosalind Krauss, Robert Morris: The
Mind/Body Problem, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994, p. xix.
17
On the matter of rules, see Robert Morris, Professional Rules, Critical Inquiry, 23 (Winter
1997), p. 298-322.
18
In a text entitled Cezannes Mountains (Critical Inquiry, 24 (Spring 1998), p. 814-829),
Morris returns to the linked notions of touch and blindness in a passage (p. 827-828) that
inevitably brings to mind his own Blind Time Drawings: The space Cezanne arrived at was an
unstable one. In the Mont Sainte-Victoire works, where objects begin to lose their identities,
space begins to compress. The feeling induced by these works is both grand and anxious,
informed by both dread and relief. It is the feeling of an incipient blindness in which we
are about to lose the visual world and its objects and the demands and terrors these inict
on us. The visual world of depth and objects is exchanged for another delivered by means
of the haptic algorithm. This landscape becomes an abyss where visual depth darkens into
touch, where touch is registered as color, as though touch could read color, as though color
was accessed by touch, or as though Mnemosyne herself arrived by the touches of colors. The
eliding of objects in favor of touches of color saturating the visual eld does not, I would
emphasize, indicate evidence for an empiricist position valorizing sense impressions over the
perception of objects any more than it theorizes the space of abstraction. The Mont SainteVictoire works teeter on a phase change. They stand, as it were, at the entrance to the world
shutting down visually, collapsing into the space of blind ness where depth is lost to touch,
which, in these late works, are the hesitant touches of mourning and farewell.
On this, see the essay by Rosalind Krauss, The Mind/Body Problem: Robert Morris in
Series in the catalogue Robert Morris: The Mind/Body Problem, op. cit., p. 2-17, and, more
broadly, the chapter on Minimalism in her book Passages in Modern Sculpture, Cambridge
(Mass.): The MIT Press, 1977. These analyses refer to the major texts published by Morris
himself since the mid-1960s, now available in the volume Continuous Project Altered Daily.
The Writings of Robert Morris, Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press, 1993. For views of the
Blind Time series in particular, see the catalogue Robert Morris: Blind Time Drawings, New
York: Haim Chanin Fine Arts, 2003, which contains texts by Nena Tsouti-Schillinger and
Kenneth Surin.
4
This is the application of a method described by Plato, who naturally has nothing but
contempt for such creating of things without true existence: Turning a mirror round and
round - you would soon enough make the sun and the heavens, and the earth and yourself,
and other animals and plants, and all the other things of which we were just now speaking, in
the mirror. (The Republic, X, 596)
5
13
Except for minor alterations, the above text is the same as the original
version published in English with the title Drawing from the Heart
of Darkness: Robert Morriss Blind Time, in J.-P. Criqui (ed.), Robert
Morris: Blind Time Drawings 19732000, Gttingen, Steidl 2005. This
book was published in connection with the exhibition Robert Morris
(27/229/5/2005) organised by the author himself at the Centro per
lArte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato (C.Arte Prato), which for the
rst time brought together about eighty Blind Time Drawings from the
six series that constitute this group of works.
11
Some Notes on the Phenomenology of Making: The Search for the Motivated, Continuous
Project Altered Daily, op. cit., p. 73.
19
20
Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy. Studies of
Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, London /New York, Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd, 1964.
This expression is taken from Walter Benjamin, who makes very striking use of it to describe
the work of Kafka in his essay written in 1934, on the tenth anniversary of the novelists death:
[...] Kafkas entire work constitutes a code of gestures which surely had no denite symbolic
meaning for the author from the outset; rather, the author tried to derive such a meaning
from them in ever-changing contexts and experimental groupings. Also, in his Conversations
with Kafka, Gustav Janouch informs us that the author of Metamorphosis once told him: My
stories are a way of closing my eyes.
21 See also Robert Morris, From a Chomskian Couch: The Imperialistic Unconscious,
Critical Inquiry, 29 (Summer 2003), p. 678-694 (describing a ctive psychoanalytic session
with Dr. Chomsky in which everything the latter says is an excerpt from one of his books).
22
See Pierre Hadot, Exercices spirituels et philosophie antique, new edition, revised and
enriched, Paris: Albin Michel, 2002.
328
REFLEXIONS DIBUIXADES
Consuelo Ciscar Casabn
Directora de lIVAM
Una paraula s un signe, per un signe no necessriament ha de ser una paraula, pot ser una
lnia en un dibuix, una nota en un concert, una ombra en una fotograa.
Umberto Eco
Eixe inters per investigar des de tots els camps, per construir i
desconstruir, o per forar els lmits dall que sha establit, ha portat
Morris a ser un dels artistes dels Estats Units ms polifactics ja que les
seues obres comprenen labstracci, passant per pintures expressives i
guratives ns a escultures o installacions relacionades amb el land art
i el minimalisme.
PRESENTACI
Jos Luis Olivas Martnez
President de Bancaixa
331
I ANTECEDENTS
Jo sc els meus dibuixos, per a b o per a mal. Els que som, estic segur, es denir de manera
molt distinta en el futur.
Robert Morris, 6 de juny de 20113
332
Els dibuixos de Morris eren molt grans i els realitzava en el sl, com les
seues pintures. Seguint lexemple de Pollock, Morris va evitar les relacions
gura-fons, que van denir la pintura ns al cubisme, i va accentuar
una superfcie summament articulada animada per un camp fracturat,
vibrant i mbil sense un centre especc. Les obres sobre paper desta
poca presagien els dibuixos orientats al procs de Blind Time (Temps de
ceguesa) que Morris abordaria dcades ms tard. Per a pintar a tan gran
escala, va construir una plataforma mbil que li permetia moures per
333
La Monte Young, que estava entre els membres originals del grup Fluxus,
va ser el cicerone de Robert Morris en lescena artstica de Nova York.
La Composition 1960 No. 10 de Young, una msica de performance
que contenia la instrucci Dibuixa una lnia recta i seguix-la, estava
dedicada a Morris. Young va ser un dels primers a apostar per una
forma de composici minimalista que intercanviava lharmonia
occidental per la duraci oriental i que es donaria a conixer com
msica drone.12 Branden Joseph ha comparat les composicions de
Young amb la inexpressiva escultura minimalista de Morris. De fet,
els dos van compartir una esttica antiexpressionista, antioccidental.13
Que el dibuix poguera indicar un cam en lespai era una idea que
bviament Morris es va prendre seriosament mentre buscava noves
formes dexpressi, refonent gneres comuns en la histria de lart amb
equivalents literals. Per exemple, el seu autoretrat consistia en un grc
dun electroencefalograma que havia fet en el laboratori de la University
of Columbia calculant el temps que tindria per a traar la distncia que
va del cap als peus mentre lagulla registrava les seues ones cerebrals. El
grc resultant era, literalment, un document de la seua ment pensant
sobre el seu cos, una imatge visual del dualisme cartesi a qu tant Morris
com els seus crtics han alludit amb freqncia.14
En els seus primers anys, quan era un jove pintor casat amb la coregrafa
Simone Forti, Morris va ser assidu al taller experimental dAnna Halprin,
334
parlar por paraules. En una cinta sha gravat el ratllat del llapis mentre
sescrivia, la intenci s que sorgisquen diverses imatges superposades, s
a dir, dibuix i/o poema i/o partitures i performance.15
Les instruccions per a un poema frugal (que tamb podria haver-se
denominat poema minimalista) anticipaven les peces de performance
i multimdia que Morris crearia posteriorment, aix com el seu gust per
les capes dimatges, present en els seus dibuixos posteriors. Morris li va
parlar a Cage sobre un altre projecte que tenia en ment per a un manuscrit
no illuminat, el qual s que es va materialitzar. Sobre un full de paper
color gris fosc de 46 x 61 cm sescriuen les Litanies of the Chariot (Slow
life. Vicious circle. Onanism..., etc.) de Duchamp i es repetixen tantes
vegades com faa falta ns a cobrir la pgina a equival a dos hores i
mitja de recitaci visual. El temps invertit sapunta en la part inferior.16
s signicatiu que Morris anote el temps que ha necessitat per a executar
lobra com a part del seu contingut. Esta s la frmula per a xar lobra
a un moment especc en el temps que utilitzaria en els dibuixos Blind
Time. En les pintures de degoteig de Pollock, esta acci noms implicava
el pas del temps en la seua crepitant trajectria. Morris estava decidit a
ancorar, incls ms literalment, lobra en un context temporal i espacial
especc. Cap al nal, molts dels seus primers objectes a la manera de
Duchamp participaven deste mesurament de lespai i del temps, per
exemple els regles, els rellotges i els comptadors.
Les escultures dobjectes dels primers temps que Morris va crear entre
1961 i 1963, en molts aspectes com a resposta a Duchamp, abordaven
la dicotomia entre el procs i lobra que creava. Com que Morris no
podia resoldre esta dualitat, va decidir accentuar-la. A era tpic de
levoluci del seu pensament: passava per una fase essencial de negaci
dun principi determinat per a entrar, amb el temps, en una altra etapa
de reexi i fer aix que havia negat. Lobjectiu, seria cada vegada ms
evident, era despullar lart deste illusionisme que havia sigut lxit
suprem del Renaixement.
Per exemple, en una de les seues primeres peces, Box with the Sound of
Its Own Making (Caixa amb el so de la seua prpia fabricaci), Morris
va fer un cub tridimensional que ocupava lespai i tamb feia referncia
al procs, perqu integrava el temps real en qu shavia realitzat amb una
gravaci del so de la seua construcci. Aix, Morris elevava el principi
dautoreferencialitat intrnsec a la denici de modernisme al nivell de la
documentaci literal dels fets.
335
Tots els artistes-com-a-artistes diuen el mateix / Lartista posthistric s letern artista-coma-artista. / Lartista-com-a-artista s lartista posthistric. / Lartista posthistric s / lartista
conscient de la seua condici dartista, / conscient de lart-com-a-art, / conscient de tot el que
no s art en lart, / dins o fora de lart.
Ad Reinhardt, Art as Art
336
subratllada pel fet que Morris porta una mscara color carn de paper
maix dels seus trets resultant dun motle de guix fet per Jasper Johns.
Les fotograes de la performance van ser molt difoses. Amb el temps,
Morris equipararia estes fotograes de Site amb les imatges que Namuth
havia captat de Pollock pintant els seus dibuixos per transferncia.
Lassociaci de Site amb una imatge icnica en la histria de lart (a
banda queda la seua nuesa frontal) va suscitar moltes interpretacions.
Maurice Berger, per exemple, va entendre lobra com una allegoria
de la classe treballadora i un testimoni de lartista com a treballador
manual.20 Una altra possibilitat s que amb Site Morris no sols estiguera
insinuant un lloc de construcci fsic, sin tamb una metfora per a
la construcci dun espai pictric en forma duna seqncia de plans
que van disminuint darrere de la superfcie. Manet, considerat el pare
del modernisme, va comenar per condensar lespai darrere del pla de la
imatge, un procs que va continuar Czanne i que, en ltima instncia,
va derivar en el rebuig de lespai illusionista que denia la pintura
moderna. En este context un podria imaginar els diversos moviments
de Morris inclinant el pla cap amunt, passant de lhoritzontalitat a la
verticalitat, per a illustrar la construcci espacial de les pintures de
Czanne amb els seus espais canviants.
tant valorava. Si b una bona part del pblic trobava lobra de Reinhardt
avorrida i els seus matisos invisibles, Morris estava entre estos jvens
artistes entre els quals tamb es trobava Frank Stella que admiraven
la seua negaci de lassimilaci supercial i de la reducci de lart a la
decoraci, aix com el seu sentit del comproms amb la contemplaci
continuada que es feia necessria per a percebre les formes quadrades, a
penes perceptibles, de les seues pintures negres.
Ning no va posar tantes objeccions a una identitat de grup com els artistes
minimalistes. En retrospectiva, ara veiem que les diferncies entre estos
creadors probablement sn ms importants que les seues similituds. Per
exemple, LeWitt i Judd van evolucionar a partir duna crtica de la pintura
que identicava lillusionisme pictric com una forma dengany acadmic.
A Flavin i Andre, daltra banda, els preocupaven ms les installacions i
permutacions que els objectes i gestalts.
337
Morris havia decidit ignorar el grup Fluxus perqu pensava que les seues
activitats eren estpides i irresponsables. Poc desprs de la seua eixida
de Fluxus, Morris va retirar contingut del relleu de plom Litanies
(Lletanies) quan el colleccionista no li va pagar. En altres paraules, es
va reservar el dret a canviar dopini, la qual cosa va enfurir els crtics
que desitjaven associar-lo a una denici i estil invariables. Clarament,
Morris estava proclamant la seua llibertat per a reaccionar, rebutjar i
abandonar qualsevol projecte quan no coincidira amb el programa que
estava en procs de desenrotllar. El seu rebuig a la passivitat, a no quedarse quiet en cap moment, el va marginar i va provocar atencions a parts
iguals. Era impredictible i reivindicava la mateixa llibertat per al seu art.
Hauria semblant lgic que Morris que formava part del cercle de Cage,
en el qual tamb estava Rauschenberg se sumara al projecte Experiments
in Art and Technology, fundat pel fsic Billy Klver i lartista Robert
Rauschenberg, i els recolzara en els seus esforos per unir art i tecnologia.
Per ja en aquell moment tot all que la tecnologia semblava oferir a
lart li produa escepticisme. Va visitar Bell Labs a mitjan els seixanta i
va concloure que el que hi estaven fent era senzillament investigar. Van
invitar els millors cientcs de diversos camps de la cincia a jugar en uns
despatxos contigus. Bell sabia que hi hauria intercanvis i que sorgirien
coses. Com el transistor. Penzias i Wilson van descobrir la radiaci de
fons de microones. Desprs Billy Klver va atraure alguns artistes i van
produir lletres de ne per a Jasper Johns. Potser feren altres coses menys
trivials, per em va fer la impressi que eren artistes que entraven en
una botiga de llepolies.23 Quan va ser invitat a participar en un esfor
collectiu, la seua resposta, una vegada ms, va ser negativa.
Els dibuixos realitzats, tant per a les peces que es van materialitzar com
per a aquelles que no, de Judd, Morris, Flavin i LeWitt documenten
el simplicat vocabulari geomtric o lestructura de quadrcula que
empraven. Morris i Judd van conar en les tcniques de dibuix mecnic
que els jvens de la seua generaci havien hagut daprendre per a
treballar en el sector de la construcci (les xiques, per la seua banda,
assistien a classes deconomia domstica per a dominar lart de vestir una
taula o fer arreglaments orals). Morris va fer dibuixos de treball, que
sn esbossos per a estes peces minimalistes, i plans geomtrics acabats
per a la construcci de les obres servint-se de la perspectiva ortogonal de
lenginyeria i els dibuixos arquitectnics.
Un dibuix que Morris va realitzar el 1945, quan estudiava al Paseo High
School a Kansas City, mostra projeccions ortogrques i la seua escala
proporcional, i constitux una sorprenent profecia per als seus dibuixos
per a escultures minimalistes i les seues possibles permutacions. Sens
dubte, este inters per la permutaci tamb es va vore inuenciat pel
seu estudi de les bases de Brncusi. A ms, este projecte inicial de crear
idntiques formes en L per a exposar-les en distintes posicions s una
continuaci de les investigacions de Brncusi.
338
De fet, es pot interpretar les lectures poden ser variades que la trajectria
dels dibuixos de Morris no s ms que una srie destratgies per a
escapar de lillusionisme pictric, desprs del fetitxisme de lobjecte,
de la geometria formalista, de lornamentaci arquitectnica, de les
estructures esttiques i permanents i, en ltima instncia, de qualsevol
intent del mercat dabsorbir la seua obra dins dun sistema econmic
que transforma lart en mercaderia. Podem entendre estos sobtats
canvis de rumb com ls personal que Morris fa del mtode dialctic
per a fer progressar el seu art en una oposici crtica cap al captol tancat
prviament. El trasllat de la galeria a lentorn va ser un intent de fer que
lobra no poguera ser convertida en un article de consum.
El land art o els earthworks (intervencions en la natura), com estos
projectes van ser coneguts, van sorgir com una crtica a les institucions
culturals i la seua identitat com a patis de recreaci per als avorrits
i ociosos. Els projectes earthworks no eren encrrecs per a costoses
escultures monumentals dexterior o per a elegants parcs com els jardins
de les Tulleries de Pars o incls plaers ms democrtics com els Tivoli a
Copenhaguen o, ja posats, el Central Park a Nova York. Van nixer de la
necessitat de reclamar la terra que havia caigut en mans de la destrucci
mediambiental o simplement docupar extensions buides en llocs
remots. Este moviment dart en la natura era un fenomen internacional i
representava no sols linters dels artistes per treballar amb la terra, sin
tamb un rebuig a lart com a objecte de comer. Robert Smithson, amb
339
Lefecte ms important de lart com a recuperaci del territori s que este pot i sha demprar
per a desfer-se de la culpa tecnolgica. Estos enclavaments amb cicatrius mineres o enverinats
pels qumics sassemblen ara menys a les conseqncies de les accions voraces i imprudents
de la indstria i ms a les seues esperades possibilitats esttiques? Ser ms senzill, en el futur,
destrossar lentorn per una ltima paletada denergia no renovable si es pot trobar un artista
terra invadit per una srie de voreres asfaltades. Smithson va suggerir una
versi a gran escala de la seua escultura Gyrostasis (1968), unes voreres
triangulars lestructura de les quals seria llegible des duna perspectiva
aria. Les propostes de Morris, LeWitt i Smithson podrien haver-se
realitzat, per no es van materialitzar mai. No cal dir que la dAndre era
estrictament conceptual, una amarga crtica als bombardejos aeris nordamericans al Vietnam.
(barat, clar) que desprs transforme la devastaci en una obra dart moderna i inspiradora?25
Les fotograes de les massacres del Vietnam i Cambodja van invadir els
peridics nacionals i les pantalles de televisi, i les obres dAndy Warhol
assassinats, disturbis racials i el triomf de la cultura de la celebritat
shavien convertit en les noves realitats americanes. Morris no volia res
da. Hi havia un sentiment, potser desencertat, que lartista estava
actuant fora de lestupidesa del mercat, que havia deixat de produir
objectes vendibles, que este, dalguna manera, havia sigut benet per esta
relaci amb els seus patrocinadors o mecenes, que estava actuant ms en
el mn real. Crec que estes actituds eren illusions, per en aquella poca
estaven esteses.27 Va continuar denunciant les poltiques del govern
nord-americ, perqu considerava que eren poltiques populistes que
atenien al gust de la mitjana i posaven all mediocre a disposici de la
majoria [...] que ells percebien com una mesura demergncia dissenyada
per a dispersar la concentraci cultural. I va afegir: Potser temen els
disturbis culturals.28
340
Si b els earthworks pblics a gran escala van traure lartista del museu i el
van situar en els espais pblics, la reacci de Morris contra estos va donar
peu a un mtode artstic molt ms ntim i personal. A va ser precisament
el que Morris exploraria en la srie de Rubbings (Fregaments) que va
executar per primera vegada el 1972 i posteriorment el 1992. Com hem
vist, els dibuixos de Morris solen associar-se amb obres concretes. No
obstant, altres dibuixos es relacionen amb problemes de representaci
versus abstracci. En esta connexi, la srie de fregaments que va fer
dobjectes i parts del cos s especialment rellevant. La primera srie,
realitzada el 1972, va ser dimpressions dobjectes del seu estudi; la de
1992, dimpressions incls ms ntimes de parts del seu cos. Per a crear
estos dibuixos va emprar bra de vidre pors o paper japons, un tipus
de paper que no es trenca quan s pressionat. Es refregava les mans amb
el grat i pressionava els grans fulls de paper, primer, el 1972, contra els
objectes, i posteriorment, vint anys desprs, contra les parts del seu cos
ns que la impressi de grat sadheria al paper.
341
Hem vist que Morris sempre abordava cada nova etapa de la seua
trajectria artstica amb una negaci inicial. No obstant, per a trobar
un nou punt de partida, tamb assenyalarem que sol comenar amb una
nova tanda de regles. A tamb s cert en la srie de laberints. Quan
explica la seua obsessi amb el laberint, cita la denici de Wittgenstein
de les normes basades en el comportament: Quan obesc una norma,
no trie. Lobesc cegament. En altres paraules, per a Morris el laberint
persistix com una metfora concreta de la condici de Wittgenstein per
a sotmetres a la norma. s una forma dencerclament, misteris i sagrat,
aterridor i claustrofbic, que el va perseguir durant tota la seua vida i
que, evidentment, t una compulsi subconscient per la repetici.
342
Sobre lAigua, que ux trbola i mesclada amb Terra i Pols; i sobre la Boirina, que es mescla
amb lAire; i sobre el Foc, que es mescla amb si mateix, i tots amb tots.
Leonardo da Vinci, Tractat de pintura
Morris acabava de visitar Pompeia, amb les seues referncies als cadvers
convertits en cendra per lerupci del Vesuvi, una altra catstrofe
natural. El 1982, el volc Saint Helens, als Estats Units, va experimentar
un devastador terratrmol i una riuada. A partir dimatges de mort per
ofegament, Morris es va interessar per la mort per incineraci. Lobsessi
temtica de laqus diluvi va ser substituda per la terra cremada de la
343
344
mai el color. Les revistes que guardava eren exemplars antics en blanc i
negre dels anys trenta i cinquanta, els anys en qu havia crescut. Amb el
temps, estos records dinfncia es van anar consolidant com una de les
seues principals inuncies.
Estos dibuixos combinen les fosques imatges de Goya amb laberints de
distintes conguracions que Morris havia dibuixat prviament o amb
una fotograa antiga de la seua germana i ell quan eren xiquets, posant
davant de la casa familiar en el carrer Indiana de Kansas City. Durant este
perode, Morris va continuar escrivint i mantenint el contacte amb la
losoa i els lsofs, per semblava girar al voltant de certes imatges a les
quals tornava amb regularitat, com el Mont Sainte-Victoire de Czanne, la
pintura de Pollock i les imatges de lHolocaust o de lombrvol perode del
maccarthisme als Estats Units, durant el qual ciutadans innocents van ser
perseguits per delictes imaginaris. Per exemple, va combinar el popular
aiguafort de Goya que representa un gegant assegut i aparentment absort
en els seus pensaments, pertanyent al Metropolitan Museum, amb una
fotograa de soldats caiguts vestits amb uniformes contemporanis.
345
En els seus gravats, Goya incloa text i imatges per a afegir una altra
dimensi a all visual, amb freqncia una dimensi tremendament
morda i crtica. Que Goya combinara paraules amb imatges tamb
ajuda a explicar la fascinaci de Morris pel pintor espanyol. Per a
lartista, Goya s una clau que obri la caixa de Pandora dels seus propis
records. Durant la dcada dels noranta va produir una srie de xicotets
dibuixos en tinta sobre mylar, una resistent superfcie plstica que fa
que els lquids diluts es propaguen en taques i ombres. Estos dibuixos
sn detallats i potics, i contrasten amb aquells altres poderosos i
enrgics, posant de manifest una part distinta de la personalitat de
Morris. Les reproduccions originals dels gravats de Goya en les quals
Morris va basar els seus dibuixos eren relativament xicotetes. Amb el
temps, este trobaria una forma dampliar-ne seccions a les dimensions
de la paret, perdent el detall de la imatge original i sumint-se en
labstracci. No obstant aix, la naturalesa desta abstracci era dun
orde diferent perqu les imatges es fonamentaven en reproduccions i
no en representacions del que veu lartista.
346
En el segle XVI Pieter Bruegel va pintar La parbola dels cecs. Quatrecents anys desprs, Morris reprendria el tema de la ceguesa com a
imatge i parbola. El primer grup de noranta-huit dibuixos de Blind
Time est datat el 1973. Morris va submergir els dits i les mans en una
mescla de grat, pigments en pols i olis oli cremat per a plasmar les
seues empremtes sobre el paper. El mtode de producci dels dibuixos
es remunta a aquells basats en treballs i performances que Morris havia
ideat al principi de la seua carrera i juxtaposa un minucis mtode
autoimposat amb sorprenents i variats resultats. Va especicar i va
apuntar en lobra, juntament amb el temps real que havia sigut necessari
per a crear-la, el temps estimat delaboraci del dibuix i el marge derror
entre lestimaci i la realitat. Per tant, va introduir el concepte derror
en lelaboraci del dibuix, cridant latenci sobre la diferncia entre la
intenci i el resultat que pot ampliar-se a tota acci humana.
Els ltims dibuixos que Morris va realitzar basats en Goya, les enormes
obres de diverses parts basades en Los disparates, que semblen abstractes
perqu la imatge est extremadament ampliada, sn de 2006. El procs
de producci utilitzat no va ser lampliaci mecnica, sin un exercici
de transferncia de la memria. Per a fer-los, Morris va estudiar els
gravats de Goya i desprs va plasmar el que recordava dells en els fulls
de mylar. Una vegada ms, va recrrer a un procs interior a la recerca
dinspiraci, com ja havia fet en casos anteriors. Estes obres a gran escala
tamb estaven vinculades amb el seu estudi de la relaci de labstracci i
la representaci que continuaria durant la dcada segent.
La investigaci sobre Los desastres de la guerra de Goya en la qual
Morris va invertir una dcada de la seua vida, combinada amb
imatges contempornies, t un impacte espectacular indit en dibuixos
anteriors. Quan li van preguntar per qu aprofundia en Goya, lartista
va respondre: Podria trobar algunes raons ms concretes, o almenys
connexions, per no vull fer-ho. En algun dels seus textos Wittgenstein
va dir que a vegades eren precisament les raons que no eren concretes
les que en realitat es desitjaven. La irracionalitat que Goya va plasmar
no li va resultar estranya a Morris, qui opinava que, de la Segona
Guerra Mundial en avant, la histria era el document duna barbrie
contnua. La crisi de qu Goya va ser testimoni en els anys previs a 1800
estava plena de profundes paradoxes: el luxe extrem coexistia amb el
patiment ms terrible i les sublevacions populars, les ms estimulants
i extraordinries troballes artstiques, tecnolgiques i cientques i la
degradaci humana, la corrupci moral i la debilitat poltica. Dos-cents
anys desprs, Morris, quan sapropia dels malsons de Goya i els barreja
amb imatges contempornies, insinua que lhome no ha fet cap progrs.
8 TEMPS DE CEGUESA
Els dibuixos els faria en una nica sessi i en una determinada quantitat
de temps i espai. Les instruccions dun dels primers dibuixos de Blind
Time diuen el segent: Amb els ulls tancats, grat en les mans i calculant
un espai de temps de 3 minuts, les dos mans tracten de desplaar-se cap
avall en la pgina amb idntics moviments en un intent per cenyir-se a
la columna vertical de marques. Temps estimat derror: +8 segons. Este
procediment s com a tots els dibuixos de Blind Time. Tots ells els va
fer en una sola sessi que condensava un temps que, al seu torn, anotava
en el dibuix. A ms de seguir el mateix programa especc de control
del temps estimat i real, i de la discrepncia entre estos dos, els dibuixos
tamb tenen en com que sn fets amb els ulls embenats i les mans i els
dits coberts de pigment, sense recrrer als instruments convencionals de
dibuix per a la creaci de la imatge.
Simultniament, i des de laltre costat des del costat corporal, del costat del cos que habita
el seu temps i espai contemporanis, i no el de la memria, per que, no obstant, sent limpuls
i la imposici de la crrega psquica de la memria, tamb hi ha en estes obres una re-crida o
redenominaci dun complex conjunt de relacions que noms podrien haver brollat desprs
de tota una vida de preparaci.
Robert Morris, Czannes Mountains, Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, 1998
347
s signicatiu que Morris guardara els dibuixos que havia fet de xiquet i
adolescent i els utilitzara com a referncies en les seues obres madures, feia
la impressi que no volia perdre el contacte amb les intenses emocions
que li evocaven. Els dibuixos Blind Time i els textos relacionats van fer
possible que Morris recorreguera la seua memria ns a arribar a estes
emocions fortes que shavien reprimit perqu eren massa doloroses. A
propsit dels dibuixos Blind Time, Morris ha escrit: Era lobstacle de no
vore, lespai cec que habitava i que era un mn. Tot es va apagar excepte
les mans mbils i la pgina, que van crear un espai tancat sobre si mateix
on la incomoditat era ms que benvinguda.40 Morris ha denit el mtode
de producci dels dibuixos Blind Time, el qual pot tindre des de gestos
violents ns a delicats detalls, com una manera dagressi, atesa la meua
postura davant el mn. Els traos ixen a un espai histric, un espai coagulat
en esta amenaadora membrana. Claustrofbia. Concebre estratgies per
a apartar la membrana deixa marques: el grat en els dibuixos Blind Time,
la trajectria de lagulla de lelectroencefalograa, etc.41
Treballant amb els ulls embenats, calculant el temps que passava, Morris
va invocar el record del primer Czanne que havia vist, el paisatge de
Mont Sainte-Victoire vu des Lauves, a la Nelson Gallery of Art de Kansas
City. Recorda que tocar estes pgines va ser per a ell com tocar Czanne.
La veneraci de Morris per Czanne era tal que el 1988 es va embarcar
en un viatge a lestudi del francs a Ais. Recorda haver tocat la capa de
Czanne: Estava ac, dret, amb els meus dits tocant la tela perqu no vaig
poder reprimir les ganes, ns que la vaig soltar perqu no podia suportar
la vergonya i la por a ser descobert. Podia sentir el trnsit del carrer i em
va impregnar la nostlgia dels silencis que Czanne buscava.42
Dibuixar amb els ulls embenats va donar prioritat al sentit del tacte sobre
el de la vista. Fer una imatge sense vore insinuava una forma destudiar
la connexi del cos amb la ment. Morris volia provar si el record de les
dimensions i els marges de la pgina determinava el moviment de les
mans i els dits a lhora de crear una imatge. Si es comparen les imatges fetes
per la dona cega en els dibuixos de Blind Time II amb les dels realitzats
per lartista amb els ulls embenats, vorem que, a pesar de la foscor en qu
es fan els traos, lmplia experincia deste en lemmarcaci i collocaci
de la imatge en un camp queda reectida en una sosticada conscincia
de la relaci de la imatge amb els marges. Lexperincia tamb nodrix les
variacions tonals i el contrast que es crea en variar la pressi i modicar
els moviments de mans i braos.
El fet que tots els dibuixos de Blind Time contraposen les imatges
realitzades als textos inscrits en el full amb posterioritat a la realitzaci
de la imatge s central per al seu signicat. La juxtaposici s una
continuaci de la investigaci que Morris va fer durant tota la seua vida
sobre la relaci entre paraules i imatges. En estos dibuixos planteja el
problema del que ocorre quan les imatges i el text sentremesclen i si
discrepen, contaminen o canvien els seus respectius signicats. Va tractar
de contestar a la pregunta de quines sn les diferncies entre all icnic
i all textual elaborant obstacles per a la creaci dimatges. La tctica
de fer obres amb els ulls tancats li va donar la possibilitat dinvestigar
les relacions entre memria, imatge i percepci espacial, elements que
Morris va comenar a dibuixar amb els ulls embenats, entre altres coses,
perqu estava buscant una forma de crear un art que eliminara tant el
gust com el talent (que, segons Duchamp, era el propsit de la seua obra).
Lartista ja havia decidit que les seleccions, combinacions i disposicions
348
Els humans estem, segons Chomsky, en una jerarquia entre les rates i els ngels. Una rata
no podria eixir dun laberint que exigira laplicaci dels nombres primers. Aix que, per qu
haurem nosaltres de tindre respostes a preguntes sobre el jo, la relaci de la ment/cos, la
conscincia, el coneixement a priori, etc.? De veritat volem saber qu pensa lngel de totes
estes coses? La nostra ceguesa davant destes qestions hauria de satisfer-nos. Per, per
descomptat, no ho fa. Per contrapartida, lngel est satisfet sense tindre respostes a estes
inimaginables preguntes que es plantegen els ngels. La de lngel s una ceguesa superior.46
349
Czanne continua regnant entre els artistes del passat els fantasmes del
qual obsessionen Morris. Quan reexiona sobre com Czanne pintava
en la seua edat daurada, Morris va escriure: A un altre nivell, estes obres
es poden interpretar com un gest agressiu, destructiu, o incls, este gest
es pot llegir entre obres, ser el resultat de la seua desesperaci i ira cap al
progrs del desenrotllament que havia alterat i destrut els seus espais
dinfncia.49 Morris apreciava les pintures tardanes de Czanne per la
falta dacabat i el rebuig a la resoluci i tancament destos conictes i
dubtes que condicionaven la seua creaci. En altres paraules, estimava
Czanne no per la seua certesa i concreci, sin pels seus dubtes. Per a ell,
el francs era lartista exemplar perqu seguix, incls al nal de la seua
carrera, arriscant i no tem o elimina les contradiccions per a aconseguir
una harmonia perfecta.
350
molts dels dibuixos de Morris no van eixir mai del seu estudi. Eren
meditacions privades. No tinc cap nestra en lestudi de dibuix que
vaig construir a Gardiner, no vull vore res ni que ning em veja a mi.
Dibuixar s una espcie dactivitat secreta. Fer un dibuix, guardar-lo en
un calaix i oblidar-men no hi ha res que em satisfaa ms.53
que la imatge de la mort per foc deu tindre un signicat especial per
a Morris. El fet que tots els dibuixos Blind Time parlen de la memria
duna o una altra manera condux a la conclusi que Morris busca trobar
la memria oblidada, soterrada i inconscient. I este record existix, hi ha
un fet lexistncia del qual coneix per que no aconseguix recordar:
quan era xiquet es va vessar una cassola de tomaca bullint pel cos i quasi
mor. Potser aquells mesos que va passar allat en una cambra doxigen
mentre es curava la seua pell i formaven les cicatrius expliquen el desig
descapar dall tancat i de crear espais que oprimixen el cos i li generen
ansietat. La idea que sn records inconscients que poden recuperar-se
estimula molts dels seus dibuixos, especialment aquells connectats amb
el contacte directe amb el cos. Per tant, la por a recobrar records perduts
es dissipa en invocar-los.
Treballar amb els ulls embenats amb tinta en les meues mans i calcular el temps, pressionar
primer les cores superiors i anar treballant cap avall, sense separar-me dels marges
verticals. Desprs, comenant per les vores inferiors, treballar cap amunt. A continuaci,
horitzontalment, pel marge superior i, nalment, pel marge inferior. La intenci ac, amb
tocs i fregaments, s fer un permetre rectangular. Desprs fregar cap al centre amb la intenci
de reomplir linterior del rectangle i dibuixar els cecs. Pense en una naci adormida per
lentreteniment estpid i sense interrupci, saturada i distreta per la imbecillitat meditica,
hipnotitzada per la informaci intil. Un entorn de control poltic en qu la fantasia es passeja
com a realitat i puerils falanges vociferen i esgarren el gran mercat del ciberespai, comprant
i venent sense sentit.
Treballar amb els ulls embenats amb tinta en la m esquerra i aigua en la dreta, comenar
per la part superior esquerra per a fer taques enroscades de tinta amb la m esquerra i desprs
tractar de sobreposar idntiques ligranes amb la dreta. s un intent de primer tacar i desprs
esborrar. Treballar aproximadament en el centre, pel mig i per baix. Desprs canviar a tinta
en la m dreta i aigua en lesquerra, i procedir digual manera, per esta vegada treballar des
del marge dret cap a linterior. Desprs dels meus insegurs intents de cartograar i esborrar
simultniament les taques enroscades, tractar de dibuixar els cecs per la pgina.
En este cas, blind que pot signicar tant cec com persiana fa
referncia la persiana que si es baixa ser un metafric intent va
damagar els horrors que samaguen darrere della. Quan estudia la
preocupaci de Goya pel desengany, Morris ha trobat la seua prpia
imatge per a arrancar la velada illusi del malson de la realitat. Amb el
desig docupar-se de la velada textura de la memria i de la profunditat
i intensitat dels sentiments lligats a la memria, superposa capes de
taques que reverberen visualment en vibracions sense resoldre. Que
estos records tamb siguen eliminats i perduts com les taques que frega o
esborra amb un raspall s part de la metfora de lexistncia i la prdua.
351
18. Al setembre de 1962, desprs de linfructus intent dels Estats Units denderrocar el
rgim cub a la badia de Cochinos, arriben a Cuba els primers mssils procedents de la Uni
Sovitica, que shavia aliat amb el govern de lilla per a construir en secret bases per a mssils
balstics nuclears dabast intermedi amb potencial per a volar pels aires bona part dels Estats
Units.
Avalua els dibuixos ja amb els ulls oberts i en descarta almenys la mitat.
La ceguesa formava part del procs, per el ju esttic que Morris
detestava, incls havia escrit textos en el seu contra s, en el fons,
decisiu. El coneixement del mn que tenen els cecs no s parcial. Quan
crea en este espai que est exempt de visi, Morris se sent lliure per a
enfrontar-se al que no pot suportar pensar o recordar a plena llum. Tots
els dibuixos creen el seu propi espai apagant tota la resta. Esta privaci
sensorial li permet a Morris estar en els seus dibuixos igual que Pollock
estava en les seues pintures, i no fora delles, distanciat del fet de la seua
creaci. En un grau absolut de simultnia immersi fsica i mental, no
hi ha distncia entre lartista i lart, i el crtic ni accepta ni rebutja el
resultat ns que no sha acabat. Si la sordesa Goya el va separar de la
vida aristocrtica, la ngida ceguesa de Morris el separa del mn ali
al seu treball i lallibera de constriccions i lmits, una cosa que buscava
desesperadament. Sha reconciliat amb la prdua i amb si mateix. I ha
trobat una forma de creaci artstica que recupera aspectes de lart del
passat que, en si mateix, constitux una forma de prdua, i que continua
valorant.
32. Ibdem.
33. Morris, Robert: A Method for Sorting Cows. Art and Literature, nm. 11, 1967.
34. Fry, Edward F.: Robert Morris in the Eighties. Newport Harbor Museum, Newport Beach
1986.
35. Ibdem.
36. Correu electrnic a lautor, 15 de juny de 2011.
37. Correu electrnic a lautor, 2 de juny de 2011.
38. Ibdem.
1. Entrevista amb Anne Beltran, From Clio to Mnemosyne. Muse dArt Contemporain, Li
2000.
2. Rose, Bernice: Drawing Now. Museum of Modern Art, Nova York 1976.
42. Morris, Robert: Words and Images in Modernism and Postmodernism. Critical Inquiry,
vol. 15, nm. 2, 1989.
4. Entrevista dhistria oral amb Robert Morris, 10 de mar de 1968. Arxives of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution.
43. Riegl, Alois: Die Sptrmische Kunstindustrie nach den Funden in sterreich-Ungarn. K. K.
Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, Viena 1901.
5. Ibdem.
6. Ibdem.
7. Ibdem.
8. Morris, Robert: Czannes Mountains. Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, nm. 3, 1998.
45. Morris, Robert: Have I Reasons. Duke University Press, Durham 2008 (ed.: Nena TsoutiSchillinger).
46. Ibdem.
10. Joseph, Branden: Robert Morris and John Cage: Reconstructing a Dialogue. October,
vol. 81, 1997, pp. 59-69.
47. Ibdem.
48. Ibdem.
11. Morris, Robert: Letters to John Cage. October, vol. 81, 1997, pp. 70-79.
12. Lesposa de Young, Marian Zazeela, creava projeccions per als concerts que organitzaven
en el seu loft, batejat amb el nom Dream House, un centre per als artistes davantguarda que
prenien partit en el grup Fluxus.
50. Robert Morris: Czannes Mountains. Critical Inquiry, vol. 24, nm. 3, 1998.
51. Ibdem.
14. Krauss, Rosalind - Krens, Thomas: The Mind / Body Problem. The Guggenheim Museum,
Nova York 1995.
54. Entrevista amb Rosalind Krauss, Robert Morris: The Mind / Body Problem. Solomon R.
Guggenheim Foundation, Nova York 1994.
16. Ibdem.
352